The UK will approve a COVID-19 vaccine that, according to drug manufacturers, is effective in fighting the new variant of the coronavirus that is spreading around the world.
Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, told the Sunday Times that researchers say his vaccine is as effective as the 95% success rate offered by rival drug developers. However, concerns have been raised about the preliminary results of partial tests suggesting that AstraZeneca’s shot is only about 70 percent effective in preventing COVID-19.
The new feature from AstraZeneca and Oxford University is easier to transport and store, which can give the country another powerful tool to combat rising infection rates there, three weeks after the UK was become the first Western country to initiate inoculations.
The vaccine could be approved by British drug regulators this week and available to the public in the first week of January.
“We believe we have discovered the winning formula and how to achieve an effectiveness that, after two doses, is there with everyone else,” Soriot told the newspaper. “I can’t tell you more, because at some point we’ll post.”
As for the effectiveness of the vaccine against the new UK mutation, Soriot told the Times: “So far, we believe the vaccine should be effective. But we can’t be sure, so we’ll try.”
Hospitals in the UK are increasingly tense as the country recorded more than 30,000 positive tests for COVID-19 and 316 deaths from the virus on Sunday, bringing the death toll to 70,752.
On Christmas Eve, British health officials said more than 600,000 had received the first of two doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
Widespread travel restrictions and public closures could be eased by the end of February if the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is passed quickly and distributed to a threshold of 15 million of the UK’s most vulnerable citizens, according to a report published in the Mirror.
Britain has pre-ordered 100 million doses of the drug.
With AP cables