India formally approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca on Sunday COVID-19
vaccine for emergency use. The vaccine, made in India by the Serum Institute, was first approved by Britain this week. This is all you need to know about the vaccine called Covishield in India.
HOW DOES THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ASTRAZENECA SHOT APPEAR WITH OTHERS?
The efficacy of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine in preventing symptomatic infections was 70.4%, according to interim data, after 30 of the 5,807 people who received the two-dose vaccine developed COVID-19, compared with 101 of 5,829 people who received a placebo. That compares with the 95% efficacy of the two-shot vaccine from Pfizer / BioNTech, the other vaccine approved in Britain.
While efficacy at any dose after a dose was set at 52.7%, the UK’s Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) regulator also said that an “exploratory analysis” of trial participants found that received a full dose showed an efficacy of 73% 22 days after the first shot.
The UK regulator recommends a booster injection four to 12 weeks after the first dose, because efficacy of up to 80% was achieved with a three-month interval between injections, said an official involved in the approval of the MHRA. .
“The efficacy of the first dose gives an indication of protection for a short period between the two doses, the second dose strengthens the immune response and is expected to provide a more durable immune response,” said AstraZeneca partner Oxford University.
Confusion about efficacy arose after interim results from the late-stage trial were announced in late November, when AstraZeneca acknowledged that people in its clinical trial accidentally received different doses. Those who received a half dose of the vaccine, followed by a full dose, were shown to have 90% protection, the company said initially, while two full doses offered only 62% protection. Now, however, the MHRA said the results of the half-dose regimen were not confirmed in the analysis.
“Everything is much more confusing because mistakes have been made, really,” an official from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) told Reuters. “Errors that resulted in clinical data much more complex to interpret than Moderna and Pfizer. And also, the efficacy is lower.”
WHAT ARE THE OTHER DIFFERENCES?
Technology, price and storage
The AstraZeneca injection is a “viral vector vaccine,” where a specially engineered virus that normally causes chimpanzees to contract the common cold delivers genetic instructions to human cells to produce the spike protein that protrudes from the new one. coronavirussurface of.
The Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines use a new technology that packages messenger RNA (mRNA) into tiny droplets of fat to instruct cells to make spike protein. AstraZeneca promised that the vaccine would cost only a few dollars per dose and would sell without profit, while Pfizer’s vaccine costs between $ 18.40 and $ 19.50 per dose.
A separate mRNA vaccine from Moderna, approved in the United States, costs up to $ 37. The AstraZeneca injection does not require deep freezing to minus 70 degrees like the mRNA vaccine from Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, and has already been produced. per million doses. It can be kept in a standard refrigerator for six months. It’s also cheaper to manufacture, giving hope to developing countries that largely missed out on early vaccination campaigns.
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