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Britain wants to control the corona pandemic with two different vaccines.
On Wednesday, the country approved the drug from Oxford University and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. The British Medicines Supervisory Authority (MHRA) has granted emergency approval of the national vaccine, announced the British Ministry of Health. It is the first approval of the vaccine in the world. Vaccinations should start from this Monday (January 4).
“The day is coming when we can lead a normal life again,” said Health Minister Matt Hancock, an announcer for Sky News. “The vaccine is our way out of the pandemic.” He is very sure that enough risk groups will be vaccinated in the spring, especially the elderly and nursing staff.
Studies have shown that the agent is less effective than the vaccine already approved by the Mainz-based pharmaceutical company BioNTech and the US group Pfizer, but it can be stored at refrigerator temperatures and is significantly cheaper. British media cite a price of £ 3 per dose, making the BioNTech / Pfizer agent cost £ 15. A Belgian secretary of state recently made public that a dose of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine costs 12 euros, the AstraZeneca remedy only 1.78 euros.
Therefore, the British government expects its vaccination campaign to be speeded up considerably. Also, the two vaccines initially available should only be given in a first dose to protect more people more quickly. AstraZeneca has committed to supplying 100 million cans to the UK.
Germany has initially obtained around 56.2 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine as part of an order from the EU. The date on which the EU drug authority EMA will launch the drug is not yet known.
It was “brilliant to end 2020 with a moment of hope,” said Health Minister Hancock. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that “as many people as possible” would now be vaccinated. “This is really fantastic news and a triumph for British science,” he wrote on Twitter.
Mass vaccination with the BioNTech / Pfizer agent has been running in Britain for more than three weeks. So far several hundred thousand people have been vaccinated. Both vaccines are given in two doses several weeks apart. In Great Britain, however, the first dose should be given to as many people in risk groups as possible. A second dose will be vaccinated at a maximum of twelve weeks, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health.
According to the first data from the study, the AstraZeneca vaccine should offer an average protection of 70 percent against Covid-19. Depending on the group, the effectiveness could possibly be significantly higher with a special dose. Sometimes doubts arose about the study design and the high effectiveness of the vaccine. Therefore, the Swedish-British group had carried out additional investigations.
Unlike the vaccines from BioNTech / Pfizer and the American company Moderna, the British-Swedish preparation does not belong to mRNA vaccines.
The active ingredient AZD1222 used by AstraZeneca is based on the weakened version of a chimpanzee cold virus. It contains genetic material for a surface protein with which the pathogen Sars-CoV-2 attaches to human cells. The agent works in two ways: it is supposed to promote the formation of specific antibodies and T cells; both are important for the immune system.
The United Kingdom is one of the countries most affected in Europe by the pandemic. Almost 80,000 people have already died there with or from Covid-19. Recently, the number of new infections has increased dramatically. 53,000 new cases were reported Tuesday, more than ever. Essex County authorities raised the alarm Wednesday over congestion at their hospitals.
Spahn urges speedy approval process for Oxford vaccine in the EU
After Britain became the first country in the world to green light AstraZeneca’s corona vaccine and the University of Oxford, Germany is also pushing for a speedy approval process in the EU.
. “With the approval of AstraZeneca today in the UK, I also assume that the European authorities will process the relevant application quickly and completely, also in the European Union,” Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Wednesday. More recently, Noel Wathion, deputy director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), gave few opportunities to European approval of the AstraZeneca product in January because data and the application for approval were still missing.
Spahn hopes that everyone in Germany can get vaccinated “by summer”, depending on whether vaccines from other companies like Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and CureVac are approved.
In London, AstraZeneca shares fell 0.82 percent to 7,401 pence at the end of trading.
LONDON (dpa-AFX) / (Reuters)
