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The head of drugmaker AstraZeneca, which is developing a coronavirus vaccine that is expected to be approved by UK authorities this week, says researchers believe the injection will be effective against a new variant of the virus that drives rapid increase in infections in Great Britain.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot also said the sunday time that the researchers developing their vaccine have discovered a “winning formula” that makes the jab as effective as rival candidates.
Some have expressed concern that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being developed with the University of Oxford, is not as good as the one made by Pfizer that is already distributed in the UK and other countries.
The partial results suggest that the AstraZeneca injection is approximately 70 percent effective in preventing diseases caused by coronavirus infection, compared to the 95 percent effective reported by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
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“We believe we have discovered the winning formula and how to get an efficacy that, after two doses, is on par with all the others,” Soriot said. “I can’t tell you more because we will publish at some point.”
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AstraZeneca researchers believe their vaccine will be effective against the new variant of the virus that is causing a rapid rise in infections in Britain and is now spreading around the world.
The British government says its drug regulator is reviewing the final data from AstraZeneca’s phase three clinical trials. The times and others have reported that the green light could arrive on Thursday, and the vaccines may begin rolling out to the UK public in the first week of January.
When asked about the efficacy of the vaccine against the new spread variant of the coronavirus in the UK, Soriot said: “Until now, we believe that the vaccine should remain effective. But we can’t be sure, so let’s test that. “
British authorities have blamed the new variant of the virus for rising infection rates across the country. They said the variant is much more transmissible, but emphasized that there is no evidence that it makes people sicker.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson sounded an urgent alarm about the variant days before Christmas, saying the new version of the virus was spreading rapidly and plans to travel and meet must be canceled by the millions.
Stefan Rousseau / AP
A view of an empty Regent Street in London during what would normally be the Boxing Day sales.
Since then, authorities have increasingly put areas of the country, affecting some 24 million people, or 43 percent of the population, under the strictest level of restrictions.
Many countries quickly banned travel from the UK, but since then cases of the new variant have also been reported in a dozen places around the world.
Public health officials said Dec. 24 that more than 600,000 people had received the first of two doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
