U.K. IS FIRST TO AUTHORIZE OXFORD-ASTRAZENECA VACCINE
Officials trying to accelerate process of inoculating people
LONDON
Britain on Wednesday became the first country to give emergency authorization to the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, clearing the path for a cheap and easy-to-store shot that much of the world will rely on to help end the pandemic.
In a departure from prevailing strategies around the world, the British government also decided to begin giving as many people as possible a first vaccine dose rather than holding back supplies for quick second shots, greatly expanding the number of people who will be inoculated.
That decision put Britain at the vanguard of a farreaching and uncertain experiment in speeding up vaccinations, one that some scientists say could alleviate the suffering wrought by a pandemic that has been killing hundreds of people each day
in Britain and thousands more around the world.
The global effort to accelerate vaccinations, coming as a new, more contagious variant of the virus is spreading, gathered steam in many places Wednesday.
China said clinical trial results showed high efficacy for one of its vaccine candidates, an announcement that hastened the global rollout of hundreds of millions of doses of Chinese vaccines but was short on crucial details. Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, long criticized for being introduced prematurely, also began use this week in Argentina, Belarus,
Hungary and Serbia, the first other countries to begin injecting it en masse. And Argentina quickly followed Britain in authorizing the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot, with India expected to do the same soon.
Britain’s two moves Wednesday — authorizing an easy-to-make, easy-to-deliver vaccine, and delaying second vaccine doses — offered one blueprint for how to ramp up inoculation campaigns that have been entangled in logistical and manufacturing problems there and in much of the West.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca shot is poised to become the world’s dominant form of inoculation. At $3 to $4 a dose, it is a fraction of the cost of some other vaccines. And it can be shipped and stored in normal refrigerators for six months, rather than in the ultracold freezers required by the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, making it easier to administer to people in poorer and harder-toreach areas.
Delaying second vaccine doses, too, could double the number of people eligible for shots in the coming weeks and eventually lighten the toll of the virus not only in Britain but also in countries facing years of vaccine shortages, some scientists said. While any one person may be better off with the full two doses, they said, society as a whole benefits if more people are given the partial protection of a single dose for the time being.
“We’re talking about potentially vaccinating in the billions more people in a given year, versus the alternative, which is to go with two doses and let them sit in a freezer,” said Michael Mina, a public health researcher at Harvard who was one of the earliest proponents of delaying second doses. “There may be a trade-off for each of those individuals, but at the population level, you may end up saving many more lives.”
Still, other scientists believe that Britain overshot the available evidence, potentially leaving older people and health care workers without the full protection of two vaccine doses amid dreadful wintertime surges. Britain did without the public meetings or voluminous briefings that have preceded U.S. regulatory decisions. No trials have explicitly tested the long-term efficacy of a single shot.
And what limited evidence exists about the protection afforded by a single dose clashed with scientists’ fears that antibody responses would wane over time, potentially falling below a protective threshold.
“What is the longevity of any protective immunity for one dose, versus two doses?” said John Moore, a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. “Where’s the data?”
The United States and the European Union have indicated that they are unlikely to authorize the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine until at least February.