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- The UK has authorized the emergency use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for use.
- The country has ordered 100 million doses, enough for 50 million people.
- The vaccine can be stored in a standard refrigerator.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
After months of testing, the UK has licensed a coronavirus vaccine created by Oxford-AstraZeneca for emergency use.
The vaccine was designed at the beginning of the pandemic and trials began in April. It is the second vaccine, after Pfizer BioNTech, to be licensed in the UK.
The vaccine was approved under Regulation 174 of the Human Medicine Regulation of 2012, which allows the rapid approval of treatments for public health crises.
The UK has ordered 100 million doses, enough for 50 million people, and according to AstraZeneca, the doses should be available by the beginning of the new year.
The vaccine is a viral vector vaccine and can be stored in a standard refrigerator unlike other vaccines that require cold storage.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Welfare told the BBC that the priority would be “to give the first dose to the largest number of people in the risk groups, rather than providing the two necessary doses in the shortest time possible.”
Recipients should receive a follow-up booster dose within 12 weeks of receiving their first injection of the vaccine.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine development has been fraught with problems. In September, trials of the vaccine were suspended after a trial participant in the UK developed an unexplained illness. And in November, Oxford-AstraZeneca faced criticism after it was revealed that there was a dosing error during vaccine trials, and that it had combined effectiveness rates from two different test groups in a press release to announce a rate of 70% effectiveness.
In reality, one group of test subjects in a test group under 55 years of age mistakenly received a lower dose of the vaccine than another group that received a higher dose. The smallest dose of the vaccine was found to actually be more effective than the largest dose, at a rate of 90% to 62%.
Scientists, including the head of Operation Warp Speed in the US, Moncef Slaoui, expressed concern about a possible misrepresentation of the vaccine’s efficacy, particularly as the vaccine over-performed in the under-age group. 55 years of lower risk.
Dose error and comparatively low effectiveness rate compared to other vaccine trials caused AstraZeneca’s stock to plummet in late November.
So far, over 600,000 people across the UK have been vaccinated with the previously approved Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.
The UK has struggled in recent weeks following the identification of a new strain of COVID-19 that spreads more easily. On Tuesday, the country reported a record 53,125 new cases.
This story is breaking. Check back for updates.
