The vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca (AZN) and Oxford University for Covid-19 was approved for emergency use in the UK on Wednesday paving the way for vaccinations to begin in the New Year. The shares added 0.7% to £75.14.
FAST DEPLOYMENT
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the first inoculation would take place on 4 January with hundreds of thousands of doses ready for next week.
The UK has placed orders for 100 million doses of the vaccine while the EU and the US have orders for 400 million and 300 million respectively.
AstraZeneca is working with its partners to continue building manufacturing capacity of up to 3 billion doses globally in 2021 on a rolling basis, pending regulatory approvals.
The company is also seeking Emergency Use Listing from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to accelerate the vaccine’s availability in low- and middle-income countries. The vaccine will be sold at cost to developing nations with a single dose priced between $3 and $4.
Chief executive Pascal Soriot said the company could supply up to 2 million doses a week and forecast that by the end of the first quarter tens of millions of patients would be vaccinated.
He added, ‘today is an important day for millions of people in the UK who will get access to this new vaccine. It has been shown to be effective, well-tolerated, simple to administer and is supplied by AstraZeneca at no profit.’
Dr. Adam Barker at Shore Capital commented, ‘overall, this is another positive day in the fight against COVID-19 and particularly the new finding that individuals have some degree of protection two weeks after the first dose of AZD1222.
‘We’ve always argued that this vaccine could be the most important in ending the pandemic, given its much lower price and ease of storage and distribution.’
LONGER DOSING REGIME
The company said that the most effective dosing regime is two doses up to four and 12 weeks apart which means more people can be inoculated with the first dose. It also provides more time between doses to manufacture additional capacity.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has advised that the priority should be to give the first dose to as many people as possible in high risk groups rather than complete the second dose as quickly as possible.
Mr Soriot said, ‘It will enable us to protect many more people because we can wait two to three months for the second dose.’
The dosing regime was shown in clinical trials to be safe and effective at preventing Covid-19 with no severe cases or hospitalisations more than 14 days after the second dose.
There was some controversy after the first results were released in November which showed that the highest efficacy of 90% was achieved only on patients under the age of 55.
On average across all age groups the vaccine was 70.4% effective, below the levels achieved by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Additional efficacy and safety data will continue to be collated from ongoing trials in the US and globally.
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