World Health Organisation (WHO) has listed two versions of the AstraZeneca/Oxford Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use.
The move communicated on Monday gives the green light for the vaccines to be rolled out globally through COVAX.
The vaccines are produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (Republic of Korea) and the Serum Institute of India.
WHO’s Emergency Use Listing (EUL) assesses the quality, safety, and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and is a prerequisite for COVAX Facility vaccine supply.
It also allows countries to expedite their own regulatory approval to import and administer Covid-19 vaccines.
“Countries with no access to vaccines to date will finally be able to start vaccinating their health workers and populations at risk, contributing to the COVAX Facility’s goal of equitable vaccine distribution,” said Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO Assistant-Director General for Access to Medicines and Health Products.
Simao added that “But we must keep up the pressure to meet the needs of priority populations everywhere and facilitate global access. To do that, we need two things – a scale-up of manufacturing capacity, and developers’ early submission of their vaccines for WHO review.”
Also, the organisation assessed the quality, safety, and efficacy data, risk management plans, and programmatic suitability, such as cold chain requirements for the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines.
AstraZeneca/Oxford product is a viral vectored vaccine called ChAdOx1-S [recombinant].
It is being produced at several manufacturing sites, as well as in the Republic of Korea and India.
ChAdOx1-S has been found to have 63.09 per cent efficacy and is suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements.
