UK grants approval for Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine candidate

The Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca has been approved by Britain on Wednesday, being the first country in the world to approve it amid the challenges with the new variant of the virus having higher transmission ability.

The health ministry stated, “The government has today accepted the recommendation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to authorise Oxford University/AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine for use.”

The approval passed by UK was important for India as Serum Institute of India,  based in Pune, is still anticipating an approval from Central Drug Standards Control Organization, as the vaccine had not received approval from UK drug regulator. As the vaccine is similar, Indian regulators wanted to review the efficacy data from the clinical evaluations conducted abroad prior to granting emergency use authorization approval in India.

Overall, the Covid-19 pandemic has taken the lives of around 1.7 million people across the world, attacked the global economy and made the normal lives of billions haphazard every since its origin in Wuhan, China a year ago.

Recently, the new discovered strain of the deadly virus in South Africa and UK, has been termed to be more dangerous according to the scientists and experts. To curb the contagion, several countries have taken the action to ban to and fro travel to UK. AstraZeneca and other vaccine developing companies have said that they are assessing the new variant and expect their vaccine shots to be effective against it. The approval to Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine candidate, is a boost as they were accused for lapses in the results from late-stage clinical trials.

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