Saudi Arabia approves Astrazeneca’s vaccine
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s food and drug administration has approved the COVID-19 vaccine made by Astrazeneca, state TV reported on Thursday.
Meanwhile, The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said the first 1 million doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine for COVID-19 are expected to arrive next week for distribution in some 20 countries on the continent.
The doses are the first of some 7 million coming from the Serum Institute in India.
Africa CDC Director John Nkengasong and colleagues did not immediately said which countries on the 54-nation continent will receive the first shipment, but Nkengasong said on Thursday that health workers will get the shots.
“We are very excited,” he said.
Earlier, two Canada-based researchers said in a leter published in the New England Journal of Medicine that he second dose of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine could be delayed in order to cover all priority groups as the first one is highly protective.
The vaccine had an efficacy of 92.6% ater the first dose, Danuta Skowronski and Gaston De Serres said, based on an analysis of the documents submited by the drugmaker to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
These findings were similar to the first-dose efficacy of 92.1% reported for Moderna Inc’s MRNA1273 vaccine, according to the leter on Wednesday.
In its response, Pfizer said alternative dosing regimens of the vaccine had not been evaluated yet and that the decision resided with the health authorities.
Some countries, grappling with low supplies, are looking at dosing paterns or volumes that differ from how the vaccines were tested in clinical trials.
There are differences over the merits of such strategies, with some arguing the urgency of the pandemic requires flexibility, while others oppose abandoning data-driven approaches for the sake of expediency.
Skowronski and De Serres cautioned that there may be uncertainty about the duration of protection with a single dose, but said the administration of the second dose a month ater the first provided “litle added benefit in the short term.”