Regulators in the UK have given approval for emergency use to the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and the company AstraZeneca.
In a statement, the UK government said the Regulatory Agency for Drugs and Health Products (MHRA) had authorized the University of Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine Covid-19 following "rigorous clinical trials and a thorough analysis of data by MHRA experts ".
The United Kingdom is the first country to adopt the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine and the first to adopt the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
In late November, the demand for new evidence of vaccine effectiveness came as AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford admitted an error in the production of their vaccine, which raised questions about the preliminary results.
The group of volunteers who took a lower dose appeared to be much better protected than the volunteers who took two full doses. In the low-dose group, AstraZeneca said, the vaccine appears to be 90% effective. In the group that received two full doses, the vaccine was 62% effective. Combined, the drug manufacturers said the vaccine appears to be 70% effective.
Oxford / AstraZeneca joined Covax, the program run by the World Health Organization to distribute vaccines to all countries and has made agreements with manufacturers in other countries, including our country. The Oxford vaccine is seen as the most suitable for developing countries, due to its low price and the fact that it can be stored in the refrigerator, unlike Pfizer and Moderna .
In a communication with the media yesterday, Prime Minister Rama said that "we are in discussions with both AstraZeneca and Moderna and I believe that very soon we will finalize the agreement with Pfizer, which is related to the capacities that are in different countries."
