Conditional approval of AZ Corona 19 vaccine by the European Medicines Agency, providing an additional 9 million doses to Europe
Maximizing vaccination through the expansion of European production facilities, the maximum vaccination interval of 3 months
The vaccination conflict between Europe and AstraZeneca, caused by a decrease in vaccine supply along with AstraZeneca’s full approval of AstraZeneca’s vaccine in Europe, is coming to an end.
First, AZ’s Corona 19 vaccine obtained conditional approval from the European Union, unusually five hours after the decision to recommend approval by the European Medicines Agency’s Drug User Committee. This approval is the third corona 19 vaccine approved by the European Union, and it has been approved for release for the purpose of inducing active immunity to prevent COVID-19 infection caused by SARS-CoV-2 for persons 18 years of age or older.
In addition, with this approval, AZ agreed to provide an additional 9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to the European Union within this quarter, and that the EU withdrew its plans to block the UK’s vaccine exports so that the supply of vaccines to the UK could proceed smoothly. It turns out that the vaccination conflict between Europe, the UK and AZ, which had been going on for the past week, has entered the procedure for suturing.
Last week, AZ announced that it would supply 31 million doses, a 60% reduction out of the 80 million vaccines agreed with Europe this quarter, due to production disruptions at manufacturing plants in the European supply chain.
After that, AZ, together with its production partners, will expand production facilities in Europe, and through this, it has agreed to increase the supply of vaccines in Europe to a total of 40 million batches. However, this agreement also accounts for only half of the vaccine supply that AZ decided to provide to Europe, and the spark of conflict remains.
AZ’s COVID-19 vaccine had an effect of 70% in phase 3 clinical trials, but higher results were found in a subset of participants due to administration errors. The vaccine efficacy was 90% in those who received the full dose after receiving half the dose due to an administration error. Currently, AZ is undergoing other clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of the vaccine in connection with the FDA’s approval for emergency use.
On the other hand, the vaccination interval of the first approved COVID-19 vaccine is 3 weeks for Pfizer vaccine and 4 weeks for Modena vaccine, whereas the vaccine of AZ can be administered between 4 weeks and 12 weeks. This is possible.
Therefore, AZ will administer the initial 20 million doses of the vaccine to 20 million people, and produce the vaccine for a period of up to 3 months to proceed with the secondary vaccination, so that the vaccine can be vaccinated to as many people as possible.
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