Shot developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca is cheaper and easier to distribute than some of the other offerings.
The United Nations Health Agency listed the COVID-19 vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford and drug manufacturer AstraZeneca, for emergency use, days after a panel of experts recommended the use of the products in environments where variants of the coronavirus.
A statement from the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday it had approved the relatively inexpensive shot produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (South Korea) and the Serum Institute of India.
“We now have all the parts for rapid distribution of vaccines. But we still have to scale up production, ”Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, told a newsletter.
“We continue to urge developers of COVID-19 vaccines to submit their files to WHO for review at the same time as they submit them to regulators in high-income countries,” he said.
The WHO list came days after its Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization issued interim recommendations on the vaccine, stating that all adults should be given two doses eight to 12 weeks apart and can be used in all countries including the one where a new variant of the coronavirus first identified in South Africa was present.
The country halted some of the AstraZeneca vaccine rollout last week after data from a small trial showed that it did not protect against mild to moderate disease of the 501Y.V2 variant.
The WHO review found that the AstraZeneca vaccine met the ‘must-have’ criteria for safety and that the efficacy benefits outweighed the risks.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca shot has been praised for being cheaper and can be stored at normal refrigerator temperatures. This makes it easier to distribute than some rivals, including the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, which was listed by WHO for emergency use in late December.
Worldwide, nearly 109 million people are reported to have been infected with the new coronavirus and more than 2.5 million have died.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine doses make up the lion’s share of doses in the COVAX vaccine sharing initiative against coronavirus.
Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands said that COVAX is a project designed to provide equal access to vaccines for low- and middle-income countries.
More than 330 million doses of the shot will be rolled out to poorer countries from the end of February.
“The countries that currently have no access to vaccines at all can begin to vaccinate their health workers and their most at-risk groups,” Challands said from East Sussex.
“The fear with the entire COVID-19 pandemic was that it would be the richest countries buying up all the vaccines and that there wouldn’t be enough to go around.”
A health officer receives a dose of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, at Infectious Diseases Hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, January 29, 2021 [File: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters]