Doctors on standby as virus vaccine is approved

THE UK became the first Western country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine with its regulator clearing Pfizer and BioNTech’s shot before decisions in the US and the EU.

The emergency authorisation clears the way for the deployment of a vaccine that Pfizer and its German partner have said is 95% effective in preventing illness. The shot will be available in Britain from next week.

“This is going to be one of the biggest civilian projects in history,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, with 50 hospitals preparing to administer the vaccine and 800 000 doses ready to be delivered from Belgium.

The UK had signalled it would move swiftly in approving a vaccine, and doctors across the country were put on standby for a possible roll-out.

For UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the roll-out may offer some political respite after eight months of criticism over his pandemic strategy, as Britain’s death toll nears 60 000.

“We can see the way out, and we can see that by the spring we are going to be through this,” Hancock said.

But first the government needs to deliver the shots across the country and its patchy record on pandemic logistics is one reason often given for why the UK has the highest death toll in Europe. In a further complication, a Brexit trade deal has yet to be signed and the end of transitional arrangements risks disrupting supply chains at the turn of the year.

The UK regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, said yesterday that the vaccine “met its strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness”.

Pfizer, along with Moderna and the University of Oxford’s partner, AstraZeneca, have sprinted ahead in a bid to deliver vaccines in record time.

Pfizer and BioNTech earlier this week sought regulatory clearance for their vaccine in the EU, putting the shot on track for potential approval there before the end of the year. In the US, a Food and Drug Administration panel is set to meet on December 10 to discuss the vaccine.

China has given authorisation to its three front-runners for emergency use. Russia cleared a vaccine known as Sputnik V in August, while a second inoculation was approved in October, even as the last stage of trials are still taking place.

The UK still needs other vaccines to reach the finish line in order to immunise enough of its population to end the pandemic. The country has ordered doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot to inoculation 20 million people, less than one-third of the population.

While the companies have said they can produce 1.3 billion doses next year, much of that supply is already spoken for in deals to ship hundreds of millions of shots to Europe, the US, Japan and elsewhere.

The approval also marks the first time a vaccine based on messenger RNA has reached the market.

The technology transforms the body’s cells into vaccine-making machines, instructing cells to make copies of the coronavirus spike protein, which stimulates the production of protective antibodies.

The Pfizer-BioNTech shot dashed to the head of the queue after delays to the trials of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine.

The UK partners have faced questions after acknowledging that a lower dosage level that appeared more effective resulted from a manufacturing discrepancy.