LONDON – Britain on Wednesday became the first country to authorize an emergency with a coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, paving the way for cheap and easy store shots that most people in the world rely on to help in the end. Epidemic.
In a bold departure from the prevailing strategy around the world, the British government also decided to start giving the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine to as many people as possible, rather than holding back supplies for a second shot as fast as possible, which would increase the number of inoculated people.
The decision puts Britain at a disadvantage in the absence of a far-reaching and unpredictable experiment to speed up vaccinations, which some scientists believe is killing hundreds of people every day in Britain and displacing thousands around the world. .
The effects of delaying a second dose as a way to provide a single dose of partial protection are not fully known. Britain, as considered by experts to be the first country to undertake such a scheme, will also delay the second dose of the Pfizer-Bioentech vaccine, which has been used there for several weeks and has been shown in clinical trials to have one effectiveness after another. One dose.
Some participants in the clinical trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine were given both doses except for a few months. British regulators said on Wednesday that the first dose of the vaccine had a 70 per cent effectiveness in protecting against Covid-19 which would make that shot effective and the second shot would be administered, although those figures are reserved for a limited subset of trial participants and have not been published.
Britain’s move to authorize the Xford-AstraZeneca vaccine and increase the gap between doses – Britain’s move – gave a clear indication of how countries with the virus could speed up vaccination programs.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca shot has become the world’s dominant form of inoculation. At ડો 3 to $ 4 a dose, that’s a fraction of the cost of some other vaccines. Instead of the ultracold freezers required by the Pfizer-Bioentech and Modernna vaccines, they can also be shipped and stored in a common refrigerator for up to six months, making it easier for people in poor and hard-to-reach parts of the world to operate.
“This is very good news for the world – it builds a global approach to global epidemics,” said Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Regarding the decision to delay the second dose, he said, “In an epidemic, it would be better for more people to be protected than for all those vaccinated to be fully protected.”
Instead of administering two shots of the coronavirus vaccine within a month as originally planned, clinicians in Britain will wait up to 12 weeks to give people a second dose. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said people would start getting the AstraZeneca vaccine early next week.
For Britain, where hospitals have been affected by the influx of new, more contagious cases of the virus, there is little hope of recovering from the decision by its drug regulator. The health service is preparing to vaccinate one million people every week at temporary locations at soccer stadiums and racecourses.
When given in two full-strength doses, the Astrazeneka vaccine has shown 62 percent efficacy in clinical trials – significantly less than the approximately 95 percent efficacy achieved by Pfizer and Moderna shots. For reasons that scientists have not yet understood, the AstraZeneca vaccine showed 90 percent efficacy in a small group of volunteers who were given an initial dose of half the strength.
British regulators authorized the vaccine at two full-strength doses, saying more promising results than other lifestyles have not been released by a thorough analysis. They warned of promising results for efficacy after a limited number of trial participants underwent a single dose of the vaccine.
In recent days, Oxford scientists who have developed the vaccine have offered little support for delaying the second dose. Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said in a radio interview on Monday that the second dose had made “a lot of sense to start with as many people as possible”.
Britain’s health service should now explain to people how to get a vaccine that seems less effective than other available shots, but can quickly end the epidemic.
In terms of authenticity Britain and Brazil relied on data from late-stage clinical trials. India’s drug regulator will also soon decide whether to authorize a vaccine being developed by a local vaccine manufacturer, Serum Institute.
Further decisions are closed in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration is awaiting data from separate clinical trials. The study was halted in September and delayed by about seven weeks – much longer than in other countries – as regulators examined whether participants’ illness in Britain was related to the vaccine. U.S. regulators eventually allowed the hearing to proceed.
AstraZeneca has set more ambitious production targets than other vaccine manufacturers, saying it expects to be able to make three billion doses next year. At two doses per person, that would be enough to inoculate one in five people worldwide. The company promises to make it permanently available at least until July 2021 and in the poorest countries of the world.
But the company has also been seized by a communications error that has damaged its relationship with U.S. regulators and cast doubt on whether the vaccine will survive intense public and scientific scrutiny. These errors have pushed back the vaccine timeline in the United States, where FDA chief executives were stunned to learn not from AstraZeneca, but from the news media to pause in its clinical trials in September.
The shock has not dampened enthusiasm for the country’s leading homeopathic cough vaccine in Britain, which analysts say could be justified if Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s caretaker term is quickly extended.
After ordering 100 million doses, with 40 million of them expected to be available by March, Britain has made AstraZeneca the lynching pin of its vaccination strategy. Since authorizing the Pfizer vaccine on December 2, Britain has used it to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of people. But as the country struggles to administer it outside of hospital and doctor’s office fees, some of its high-priority recipients, such as nursing home residents, are still vulnerable.
“We think we’ve found the winning formula and how to get efficacy, which, after two doses, is there with everyone else,” Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s chief executive, told the Times of London in an interview published on Saturday. The company has not disclosed any evidence that it has a higher efficiency rate than Pfizer or Moderna. “I can’t tell you more because we’ll publish at some point,” Mr Soriot told the Times.
Oxford scientists have published interim findings of vaccine clinical trials in The Lancet this month. Subsequent final results from those tests are not expected to differ significantly from the interim data, as is typical in clinical research.
AstraZeneca’s U.S. The trial had more than 27,000 participants last week, short of its target of 30,000. The results of this trial could be and if positive, an emergency is allowed in the United States in February or March, said Monsef Sloui, head of Operation Spearm Speed, in an attempt to track American federal coronavirus vaccines faster, at a news conference. Last week.
