The World Health Organization has granted emergency authorization to AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine, a move that should allow the United Nations agency's partners to ship millions of doses worldwide as part of a UN-backed program to tame the pandemic.
"We now have all the pieces in place for the rapid distribution of vaccines. But we still need to scale up production," WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a news briefing.
"We continue to call for COVID-19 vaccine developers to submit their dossiers to WHO for review at the same time as they submit them to regulators in high-income countries."
A WHO statement said it had approved the vaccine as produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio from South Korea and the Serum Institute of India.
The listing comes days after a WHO panel provided interim recommendations on the vaccine, saying adults should receive two doses with an interval of around eight to 12 weeks.
The WHO's review found the AstraZeneca vaccine met "must-have" criteria for safety, and that its efficacy benefits outweighed its risks.
It is also cheaper and easier to distribute than some rivals, including the one from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, sometimes called "the Oxford vaccine", is one of the jabs which will be made available in Australia.
The Australian Government has secured 53.8 million doses, making it a core plank in the country's coronavirus vaccine plan.
Australia also received its first batch of 142,000 Pfizer vaccines on Monday.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is only the second shot the WHO has approved, following the one from Pfizer-BioNTech in December.
The announcement should trigger the delivery of hundreds of millions of doses to countries that have signed up for the UN-backed COVAX effort, which aims to deliver vaccines to the world's most vulnerable people.
"Countries with no access to vaccines to date will finally be able to start vaccinating their health workers and populations at risk," WHO's assistant director-general for Access to Medicines and Health Products, Dr Mariangela Simão, said.
Nearly 109 million people globally have reportedly been infected by COVID-19 and more than 2.4 million have died, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
Doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine make up the lion's share of those in the COVAX coronavirus vaccine-sharing scheme, with more than 330 million doses of the shot due to be rolled out to poorer countries from the end of February.
The WHO established its emergency use listing process to help poorer countries without their own regulatory resources quickly approve medicines new diseases like COVID-19, which otherwise could lead to delays.
The COVAX Facility, which is co-led by Gavi — an international organisation with the aim of increasing immunisation in developing countries — the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the UN Children's Fund, has said doses would cover an average of 3.3 per cent of people in 145 participating countries.
Source: www.abc.com
