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Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine approved for use in UK

376 points by agd 6y ago

maa5444 6y ago
you guys are now fucked.... so .... fucked
dia80 6y ago
Seemed to take a surprisingly long time. Let's hope the time had been well spent planning the roll out.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  By what standard? The article says specifically: It has been developed at a pace that would have been unthinkable before the pandemic. The new vaccine approval comes after Public Health England said the country was facing "unprecedented" levels of infections
- DrBazza 6y ago
  The reverse actually. Whilst Oxford had the (generic) basis of the vaccine ready to go, prior to the COVID outbreak, it was the removal of all bureaucracy in this, and other, vaccine trials, that has allowed them to go from r&d to approved in 10 months or so. Which is apparently what researchers will tell you is the 'real' time it takes to develop a vaccine. No time writing proposals and rewriting them when they get rejected, no awaiting someone to approve the proposal, no applications and waiting for grant money, no time spent waiting for volunteers for clinical trial groups, and so on. Regarding the dosage, more information here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55308216 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55308216 (edit) and the time to develop here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55041371 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55041371
  - kenhwang 6y ago
    The biggest speedup factor was how easy it was to get people sick. A certain number of people had to get sick within the trial groups before results could be conclusive. With how widespread COVID is and how many people caught it, they hit that requirement significantly faster than they normally would.
  - andylynch 6y ago
    Yes. Listened to one of the researchers talking about this. They said just that, this time difference here is almost all down to not waiting for funding or going through the usual grant process.
- gns24 6y ago
  I assume you are referring to the approval process. I've been thinking that too. I don't want to be that person who thinks a really complicated thing should be trivial, so: Can anyone suggest why it would take weeks to approve these vaccines? What might the regulator actually be doing in this time? They're clearly going to know that the request is urgent, and know when it's going to be arriving in their inbox; they could ask for anything apart from final data ahead of time to check everything is as they want it. I don't see why they can't have made sure they were happy with everything else ahead of receiving the final data.
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    Given the pace, and the lack of years-long trials, they perhaps brought in a lot of additional people to help analyse the methodology and data.
  - kenhwang 6y ago
    Both Pfizer and Moderna were approved within a week of request. So it's not expected for the approval process to be slow. If you compare the data between Pfizer[1] and AstraZeneca[2]. The AZ trials were significantly more complicated, with variations in methodology between phases and locale and much smaller sample sizes. It looks like they had to massage data and combine phases and explain differences, why they were doing it, and why it should still be considered safe. Pfizer just submitted a giant sample size homogeneous trial result. I would imagine it's way easier explaining and approving the one methodology/result with a giant sample size from Pfizer than the four methodologies/trials with small sample sizes and different doses within those trials given by mistake from AZ. [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577 https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577 [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32661-1/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
    - timurg 6y ago
      in the findings for AZ, there is 1 reported death. So this means particapnt got the virus outside and vaccine didn't work right?
- thamer 6y ago
  What was long about it? It only months instead of years, and for mRNA vaccines this whole time was spent on the validation and approval process while the vaccine design itself took only about ~2 days right after SARS-CoV-2 was sequenced. From https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac...: > "Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public"
kenhwang 6y ago
Looks like they approved the two-dose 62% ~effective~ efficacy regiment. There was a lot of hope for the one-dose given the supply constraints or a retrial for the more promising half+full dose for greater efficacy. I wonder if people will ask which vaccine they're receiving. 62% is kinda underwhelming when there's two 95% ones (Pfizer/Moderna), a 92% one (Gamaleya), and a 79-86% one (Sinopharm). With the latter two also not needing subzero temps.
- jsnell 6y ago
  The announcement [0] says they are going to prioritize everyone in risk groups getting their first shot over some people getting two, and as a result might have up to 12 weeks between the two shots. That seems like a reasonable way of dealing with the supply constraints, without entirely throwing out the protocol established via testing. [0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/oxford-universityastrazeneca-vaccine-authorised-by-uk-medicines-regulator https://www.gov.uk/government/news/oxford-universityastrazen...
  - pstrateman 6y ago
    If you're in a high risk group surely you want the more effective vaccine? I doubt you can have both (even if safe, it's not tested at all).
    - MrAlex94 6y ago
      Both vaccines seem to stop hospitalisations completely, which seems to be the most important part. > No hospitalisations or severe disease observed in the vaccinated groups from three weeks after first dose https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-12-08-first-peer-reviewed-results-phase-3-human-trials-oxford-coronavirus-vaccine# https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-12-08-first-peer-reviewed-res...
    - andylynch 6y ago
      Given the choice, yes but anything now is better than something in a few months, time, especially looking at current UK mortality rates. These are now rivalling the first wave, even with treatments learning in the last nine months and NHS fully geared up.
kjakm 6y ago
Interesting shift in strategy. Instead of giving the second dose within a few weeks of the first they’re going to allow up to 12 weeks between doses. Allows them to get more widespread level of some protection with dose 1 before later boosting protection.
- interdrift 6y ago
  Good idea indeed!
- neals 6y ago
  What would be interesting about that is what happens when people are not going to get the booster for various reasons.
  - jimmygrapes 6y ago
    Mutation?
    - f6v 6y ago
      Mutations happen all the time regardless of vaccines. The vaccine adds evolutionary pressure and will likely give an advantage to the bearers of particular mutations.
      - ptaipale 6y ago
        If the virus has a smaller base of infected people who grow it, there will be less mutations. From that point of view, the sooner all the world is vaccinated, the better. The risk of a new, more dangerous mutation decreases.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    I think early data showed that you still get ~60% protection with the first shot (or was that for the Moderna vaccine?) Still, you get some level of immunity, booster only makes it higher.
raverbashing 6y ago
It's not clear if this is on an emergency basis or not. Also interestingly, the UK has not approved the Moderna shot yet
- kjakm 6y ago
  I believe the UK has relatively few orders of the Moderna vaccine whereas they are highly reliant on the Oxford one. Makes sense for the regulatory to put all resources on Oxford once Biontech had been approved and then (I presume) look at Moderna next.
- chippiewill 6y ago
  UK deliveries of the Moderna vaccine aren't until April or later (and only 5m doses total) AFAIK so the Government / MHRA have probably placed it on the backburner.
xiphias2 6y ago
The whole article skips the question of the differences between the 60% and 90%. We still don't know the effectiveness on old people, but that seems to be the main differentiator. Not writing that in the article is dishonest.
interdrift 6y ago
Brexit might have some benefits after all. Let the competition begin!
- quonn 6y ago
  Any EU member can always approve any vaccine independently.
  - oblio 6y ago
    It's almost like EU countries tend to trust the joint efforts and don't generally go at it alone. Well, with the obvious exception that happened this year (Brexit).
- drawfloat 6y ago
  The vaccine was developed prior to the end of the transition agreement, and the UK already had protocols for approving vaccines before rest of the EU (see Pfizer). What's this got to do with Brexit?
  - karimtr 6y ago
    The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has unfortunately been heavily politicized in the UK. The reporting around it has always sounded a bit nationalistic. For the past few months, the government has been using every opportunity to justify Brexit. The vaccine approval process being one of those.
    - DrBazza 6y ago
      I disagree. I don't think it's been "heavily" politicized, or even moderately, though I'm happy for you to point me to a clip or link of the Government taking claim for it? > The reporting around it has always sounded a bit nationalistic. The press have certainly reported that it's British developed, and why not? I'd say they equally reported that the Moderna vaccine was developed by Turkish Germans/German Turks.
lawrenceyan 6y ago
<70% effectiveness is...not so great to say the least when you have vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna at 95% effectiveness already.
- MrAlex94 6y ago
  There are many factors at play: * Cost of vaccine * Ease of manufacturing * Ease of distribution * Prevention of severe cases and hospitalisations It seems all vaccines currently approved so far prevent hospitalisations completely. It won’t stop the epidemic completely depending on coverage but it’s enough to stop killing people.
- cranekam 6y ago
  The half + full dose regime appears to have greater efficacy but wasn't approved because of insufficient data. I hope more data comes in and permits this. Also: "However, unpublished data suggests that leaving a longer gap between the first and second doses increases the overall effectiveness of the jab." That may well help too. But at the end of the day, the world needs a lot of vaccine. It's better to have Pfizer/Moderna and the Oxford vaccine at our disposal, particularly when the latter is also much cheaper and easier to store (this will be crucial in developing countries and/or rural populations). What matters is having fewer people get sick or die, not ensuring everyone is given the vaccine with the greatest efficacy.
  - grey-area 6y ago
    The world would have 2x the vaccine available if they can fast track approval of the lower first dose. Hopefully given the prevalence in the UK they can now quickly do that work.
    - snovv_crash 6y ago
      That assumes the bottleneck is in the actual vaccine constituents, and not in manufacturing or sourcing the billions of delivery mechanisms.
iainmerrick 6y ago
Does anyone have a good link for the current status of the Gamaleya (Sputnik V) vaccine? I’ve been hearing and reading a lot of FUD about it, but if you were to take the (self reported) stats in this BBC article at face value it looks like one of the best options. I found eg this Wired article that talks a lot about the geopolitical maneuvering of Russia/China/India in Africa and South America: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/russia-covid-vaccine-sputnik-v https://www.wired.co.uk/article/russia-covid-vaccine-sputnik... But really, despite a lot of pejorative language in there -- “Once they have this relationship, they can extort whatever they want” -- it just sounds like the same strategy the UK has been attempting (both politically, and in terms of vaccine development and approval), except the Russian version sounds more successful so far. Edit to add: apologies in advance for dragging politics into this! But it seems like politics and vaccines are unfortunately intertwined.
- DrBazza 6y ago
  > it just sounds like the same strategy the UK has been attempting You mean selling the COVID vaccine to 3rd world countries at cost/zero-profit, or others prior to this? https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/23/oxford-astrazeneca-results-covid-vaccine-developing-countries https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/23/o...
  - iainmerrick 6y ago
    Well, yes! Substitute “zero profit” with “low cost” and it sounds like the same idea. The key question would seem to be, who can produce and distribute those billions of doses first? Is the AstraZeneca vaccine being produced at a large enough scale already, and/or has the current capacity already been bought up by the EU and other rich countries?
    - DrBazza 6y ago
      "Big Pharma" needs to make a profit from somewhere to finance r&d. 9 in 10 drugs (warning, made up statistic alert) don't reach the market, or something like that. And then they need to spend money on manufacturing. Then of course you have 'generics' when the drug is out of patent and other companies can produce it without royalties. From the BBC article(s) I believe the UK has ordered 100m doses. I have no idea who is producing those though, and how long it takes.
grey-area 6y ago
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved two full doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. That’s the 60% effective version. This is disappointing, hopefully they are working on getting approval for the 90% effective regime. They could vaccinate far more people that way.
- agd 6y ago
  I believe the 2 doses will be administered 3 months apart. This should help get people their first dose more quickly and there’s a suggestion that this approach also has higher effectiveness.
  - grey-area 6y ago
    That sounds good, the article doesn’t make this clear at all.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway4good 6y ago
This is the type of vaccine that can end the pandemic. Cheap to produce, cheap to distribute, old well-understood technology. Also many countries have the capacity to produce a similar vaccine. For example here is a feel good story from RT about Venezuela buying Russia's similar Sputnik vaccine: https://www.rt.com/news/511063-sputnik-vaccine-venezuela-deal/ https://www.rt.com/news/511063-sputnik-vaccine-venezuela-dea... 10 m. doses to be delivered within 3 months. How long time would it have taken Venezuela to procure a similar amount of mRNA vaccines from Pzifer or Moderna?
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  > old well-understood technology. While they have been tested in trials for long, all of the adenovirus-based vaccines are new. There is only 1 commercially approved adenovirus vaccine, for rabies in wild animals.
  - collyw 6y ago
    That's one more than mRNA vaccines had been approved before the Covid one.
  - rplnt 6y ago
    I believe I've read somewhere that US military had been using it for some time. Not sure what for.
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    Also J&J's Ebola vaccine, which is IIRC approved in Europe.
- mft_ 6y ago
  It is not old understood technology. This approach is nearly as new and novel as the RNA vaccines.
alkonaut 6y ago
So because only the 2-full-dose trial had large enough N, that's the one that's approved, so people will be given what is most likely 60% protection even though it's possible, likely even, that if the person administering the vaccine simply doesn't inject the whole first dose - the protection will be higher? What will happen when the 0.5+1 dose trials are finished? Will the dosage recommendation simply be changed then?
collyw 6y ago
Does this vaccine actually provide immunity like normal vaccines? The mRNA one apparently didn't stop you catching or spreading covid which really makes me wonder why it is being pushed so hard when the virus isn't actually a danger to most healthy people under 65.
dharma1 6y ago
Astra has some new unpublished data showing similar efficacy to the mRNA vaccines, and 100% severe COVID prevention. https://archive.is/pMhDo https://archive.is/pMhDo The UK really needs to roll this out fast because the current sudden growth in hospitalisation rates is a disaster, NHS is near full capacity again. I suspect there will be a full lockdown in January too.
- jhh 6y ago
  It's so odd that he would make these statements in an interview without the data or a press release published. I mean this should be information subject to mandatory publication with regards to their shareholders. Astra has been by far the least trustworthy of the major companies so far. I just hope their jab works anyway.
- dm319 6y ago
  Yes the UK is about to hit a healthcare meltdown at this point.
- Arch-TK 6y ago
  From how I see it T4 is already a full lockdown and iirc over half the country is in T4 already so I don't see how things can be much different in January.
  - pmg102 6y ago
    There's the 'school closures' lever still to pull. Then there's things like only being allowed out of your house once a day for exercise. And maybe if your work can't be done from home you're paid to stay home and not do it unless it's an essential service? Key things are 1. This is only for a short and bounded time while we roll out vaccine 2. We need to get numbers down so that vaccine rollout isn't impinged
JajT 6y ago
AstraZeneca, Russia's Sputnik V developer to sign cooperation memorandum -Kremlin https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-astrazeneca-russia-idUSKBN28V0Z6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-astraz... So, there is no reason to force down our throats the dubious vaccine from Pfiser which requires -70 C storage facilities. Not to mention of course the its creator has not been vaccinated yet. He said he did not want to take someelse's place.. What a horseshit.
- mft_ 6y ago
  You mean the CEO of Pfizer? He’s faaaar from being the creator of this vaccine, that was created by scientists in Germany, who were unrelated to Pfizer at the time.
barnacled 6y ago
An issue that I basically never see come up is - why not administer the vaccine earlier on (pre-approval) to the most vulnerable? if P(death|vaccine) < P(death|covid) then it seems really barbaric not to give it. Many dead people now could be alive had that been done (and mRNA candidates were apparently available extremely early on). The Oxford vaccine is a more classical one so wasn't available quite as early, but apparently the mRNA ones were developed in a very short space of time (weeks - months) and future development could cut that even further (and preemptive vaccines for potential pandemic-causing viruses could be kept in stock) - perhaps introducing a Bayesian triage pre-approval could be an important strategy in fighting viruses in the future? In any case this and the mRNA vaccines are really tremendous achievements and somewhat restores my faith in humanity after a terrible year...
- odnes 6y ago
  > An issue that I basically never see come up is - why not administer the vaccine earlier on (pre-approval) to the most vulnerable? if P(death|vaccine) < P(death|covid) then it seems really barbaric not to give it. Not sure, but I would think it comes down to hospitals not being overrun in the case of a widescale negative response to the vaccine. But since the whole thing is a game of probabilities, I do share your view.
  - barnacled 6y ago
    You could distribute it in limited batches to only the most vulnerable which should reduce any risk of that. I think the most vulnerable are in any case most likely to already be heavily using the health services anyway (and would be the ones engaging them the most if they caught the virus).
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Because of ethics in drug development. And these rules are there for a reason. Not sure what could have been done better with Covid vaccines, we have three now roughly a year after the first cases. All of them work and are either certified or on the track to soon be. We even have four if you include the Russian one. Summing up the ethics part: Studies include volunteers in a controlled environment. Just administering un approved stuff to people means using people as guinea pigs. I don't want that, and it is doubtful we would have gained anything. Because now it is "simple" distribution and production problem.
KaiserPro 6y ago
This is good news for the UK. However I lack any confidence that the british government will be able to roll this out at any sort of speed. The government has had almost a year to plan for the rollout. Obviously there are some different logisitics for storing the various vaccines, however the last mile infra is exactly the same. There is a plan to train 30k st johns ambulance volunteers, however if they want a smooth rollout, they should have been trained already. This hasn't happened yet. Getting the jabs in the people is only part of the problem, the jab needs to be prescribed, but doctor time is rare (as they are all being hoovered up to provide 45% extra intensive care beds) Not only that, after the jab, you need to watch the patient for anaphylactic shock. This requires nurses, again very much lacking in numbers.
- andylynch 6y ago
  Good point on the monitoring requirement but not sure why you think this would need a prescription? Normal vaccinations you just go through some questions on risk factors before the nurse gives you the shot, usually on egg allergy, any past reactions and the like. No reason this would be any different.
  - KaiserPro 6y ago
    In the UK, All vaccinations are prescribed. Any medicine that is not over the counter needs to be explicitly prescribed before it can be dispensed. (this is what my doctor friends tell me anyway) > Normal vaccinations you just go through some questions on risk factors before the nurse gives you the shot there are nurse prescribers, that have the power to prescribe a limited number of things. That aside, the prescription doesn't need to be done with the patient present. it can be pre-filled with the nurse/other arranging the dispensing. this doesn't mean that the rules can't be changed. I suspect that in time there will be special dispensation given to allow non medical staff to prescribe, dispense and administer jabs. However until the first million or so have been done, they'll want to keep an eye on things and monitor the number of "yellow card" incidents that occur.
habosa 6y ago
60% effective but 100% effective at preventing severe illness. That's really what matters. It's not about making sure nobody gets the virus (none of the vaccines can offer that) it's about making sure we can live with this thing until it goes away. I live in the UK and if they offer this, I'm taking it.
ngcc_hk 6y ago
Internet - source of information, sharing and community. But use to be a totalitarian tool of control by at least one country. Virus - worry about all these from flu, hiv to these. This also turned out to be used for totalitarian control. How do libertarians survived this two front war, I wonder.
dm319 6y ago
The key take-home about this vaccine is it is a more traditional approach using an adenovirus vector, which doesn't have the cold chain logistical constraints of the pfizer vaccine. This means it will be possible to vaccinate in the community away from the cold storage found in large teaching hospitals, and also means that this vaccine can be supplied to parts of the world where it wouldn't otherwise be possible. Apart from a non-selfish point of view that the world should be protected from this virus, I also wonder how important it will be to control the virus in a global scale to reduce the chance of further mutations that may cause another pandemic in the near future.
- andygates 6y ago
  The other key take-home is that nobody got a serious case so that's 100% effective at preventing the collapse of the healthcare systems of the world. It's really good news all round.
rajman187 6y ago
If we put aside the protocol failure (accidentally giving half dose then full dose), and ignore the fact that they tried to not discuss this for some time until called out on it, of course, you can't stress-test (injection of virus to actually test for immunity) as it's not ethical. So the summary metric is the Vaccine Efficacy, calculated as 1-relative risk, where relative risk is the incidence of infection in the vaccine group relative to the incidence of infection in the control group. So with N = 75 the targeted number of post-dose infections, and V = # vaccinated out of the N, P = # placebo out of the N, are they saying that 100*(1-V/N) is the efficacy ? Then if it's 50%, it actually means you have no benefit over the placebo.
oytis 6y ago
Do I understand it right that they approved it before the phase 3 trial has been completed? In Russia this strategy has led the trial to a failure because people who got placebo would just go and get the real vaccine.
- dbbk 6y ago
  That is not right at all.
  - oytis 6y ago
    That's what I read in AstraZeneca press-release. > The MHRA’s decision was based on ... _interim_ analysis of the Phase III programme > Additional safety and efficacy data for the vaccine will continue to accumulate from _ongoing_ clinical trials. https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020/astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine-authorised-in-uk.html https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020...
amrx431 6y ago
On a different note, some research must be done to investigate such low prevalence and fatality ratio in countries like India and Pakistan.
- anovikov 6y ago
  Super easy, they just have very, very few old people. Different population pyramids. Hence low fatality ratio. And low prevalence is just because vast majority of people are young and have it asymptomatically. It may also play a role that asymptomatic carriers have lower chance of transmitting infection, so R0 in those countries is lower.
  - riprock 6y ago
    Thoughts on countries like Japan with a super-aged population but with low fatality ratio?
    - anovikov 6y ago
      Culture of discipline. If government says you to wear masks, you don't run a rally because not wearing a mask is your "human right". You wear a mask.
jason0597 6y ago
I do not understand why there is a strong sentiment in the comments here about how a 63% efficacy rate is dissapointing. First of all, this is for the 2 doses 4 weeks apart regime, there is already some evidence to suggest that a 1.5 dosing regime results in a higher efficacy, along with other evidence about a theoretical 3 month wait time between the two doses for a higher efficacy rate. Secondly, this vaccine already prevents hospitalisation and severe illness! That's already a game-changer in and of itself. If you vaccinate the 20m or so who are the most vulnerable to COVID-19 and the most likely to require hospitalisation, then you immediately solve the hospitals-may-be-overflowing problem out of the pandemic (which is the only reason we go into lockdown in the first place). This will allow life to return to normal!
mchusma 6y ago
Amazing news, and so happy to see a lot of good sense here from the UK. They have distanced themselves from the US with the fastest approvals of Pfizer and Astrazeneca, the smartest targeting of the population (a focus on saving lives by targeting most vulnerable groups first), and the enormously helpful focus on getting some immunity first before worrying about second doses. The UK is no longer constrained by manufactured doses or anything else. The faster they put that existing supply into people, the faster they are done. They could be done with the pandemic by the end of January.
- mattlondon 6y ago
  > They could be done with the pandemic by the end of January. There are only 500,000 doses available for the first week of Jan according to Hancock's statement in the commons a few minutes ago, so it will be a while before everyone gets their first dose.
  - mchusma 6y ago
    That would be suprising, given the quantity already produced by their partners worldwide. Because of the more standard supply chain they have many manufacturing partners. But I'll look for sources. Astrazeneca was always supposed to be a high volume player vs the others.
  - vegannet 6y ago
    My understanding was always that AZ had capacity to produce many billions of doses by year (2021) end, and already had a large supply ready to go: is it possible that “first week of January” is referring specifically to the number of doses that can be administered by then which is limited by more than supply? Distribution, appointments etc. And if so, could we see the second week of January jump substantially? Access to just 500k doses would be a significant shift from the expectations that have been shared so far.
    - kingosticks 6y ago
      In Johnson's press conference just now they said the number of vaccinations was entirely limited by the available supply, not the ability to administer it, nor the distribution of it. They were explicit about this.
homami 6y ago
How long does it take to vaccinate the whole population? I did not look for better sources, but I read in this [1] CNN post that in 2021: AZ is producing 3 billion doses, Pfizer 1.3B and Moderna less than 1B. So in total we are going to have 5 billion doses in 2021. Each person requires two doses. So we end up vaccinating around one third of the world's population. It seems to me even at the end of 2021 our lives will be still far from "normal". Are there other promising vaccines on the way? [1] https://us.cnn.com/2020/12/30/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html https://us.cnn.com/2020/12/30/investing/premarket-stocks-tra...
InTheArena 6y ago
This is a approval for all of the people who said to just allow Hydrochloriquine for everyone, because after all, its a pandemic, and how bad can it be? (turns out, it gave people heart attacks). Not only have AZ lied about their test plans (claiming that the two differing dose was deliberate in the first press releases), lied about who was at fault with dosing errors (they insisted that the Italians where at fault), "pooled" results with different populations to try and make a argument they were not testing for (which critically didn't include people over 55) - they just managed to get the UK to approve a dosing strategy that they never even tested. It's a pandemic - and the UK has invested a lot in both loves and national prestige in this vaccine. But the shortcuts here may come back to haunt. Or it may be what stops this disease in it's tracks. it's a hell of a gamble either way..
- standardUser 6y ago
  Counterpoint, it's been proven safe based on all available data (which is more than for any other vaccine) and it reliably prevents serious illness even if it doesn't prevent all infections as reliably as the mRNA vaccines. If we want the best possible vaccine, wait 6 months. If we want a safe vaccine that can end the pandemic as quickly as possible, this is the vaccine for the job.
  - InTheArena 6y ago
    Except none of that data is actually public yet - and a ton of work is going to have to go into bias-work because of the half-assed pooling work that AZ did.
InTheArena 6y ago
Much more details here - https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/30/vaccine-roundup-late-december https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/30/va...

376 points by agd 6y ago

maa5444 6y ago

you guys are now fucked.... so .... fucked

dia80 6y ago

Seemed to take a surprisingly long time. Let's hope the time had been well spent planning the roll out.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
By what standard? The article says specifically: It has been developed at a pace that would have been unthinkable before the pandemic. The new vaccine approval comes after Public Health England said the country was facing "unprecedented" levels of infections
DrBazza 6y ago
The reverse actually. Whilst Oxford had the (generic) basis of the vaccine ready to go, prior to the COVID outbreak, it was the removal of all bureaucracy in this, and other, vaccine trials, that has allowed them to go from r&d to approved in 10 months or so. Which is apparently what researchers will tell you is the 'real' time it takes to develop a vaccine. No time writing proposals and rewriting them when they get rejected, no awaiting someone to approve the proposal, no applications and waiting for grant money, no time spent waiting for volunteers for clinical trial groups, and so on. Regarding the dosage, more information here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55308216 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55308216 (edit) and the time to develop here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55041371 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55041371
- kenhwang 6y ago
  The biggest speedup factor was how easy it was to get people sick. A certain number of people had to get sick within the trial groups before results could be conclusive. With how widespread COVID is and how many people caught it, they hit that requirement significantly faster than they normally would.
- andylynch 6y ago
  Yes. Listened to one of the researchers talking about this. They said just that, this time difference here is almost all down to not waiting for funding or going through the usual grant process.
gns24 6y ago
I assume you are referring to the approval process. I've been thinking that too. I don't want to be that person who thinks a really complicated thing should be trivial, so: Can anyone suggest why it would take weeks to approve these vaccines? What might the regulator actually be doing in this time? They're clearly going to know that the request is urgent, and know when it's going to be arriving in their inbox; they could ask for anything apart from final data ahead of time to check everything is as they want it. I don't see why they can't have made sure they were happy with everything else ahead of receiving the final data.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Given the pace, and the lack of years-long trials, they perhaps brought in a lot of additional people to help analyse the methodology and data.
- kenhwang 6y ago
  Both Pfizer and Moderna were approved within a week of request. So it's not expected for the approval process to be slow. If you compare the data between Pfizer[1] and AstraZeneca[2]. The AZ trials were significantly more complicated, with variations in methodology between phases and locale and much smaller sample sizes. It looks like they had to massage data and combine phases and explain differences, why they were doing it, and why it should still be considered safe. Pfizer just submitted a giant sample size homogeneous trial result. I would imagine it's way easier explaining and approving the one methodology/result with a giant sample size from Pfizer than the four methodologies/trials with small sample sizes and different doses within those trials given by mistake from AZ. [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577 https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577 [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32661-1/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
  - timurg 6y ago
    in the findings for AZ, there is 1 reported death. So this means particapnt got the virus outside and vaccine didn't work right?
thamer 6y ago
What was long about it? It only months instead of years, and for mRNA vaccines this whole time was spent on the validation and approval process while the vaccine design itself took only about ~2 days right after SARS-CoV-2 was sequenced. From https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac...: > "Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public"

kenhwang 6y ago

Looks like they approved the two-dose 62% ~effective~ efficacy regiment. There was a lot of hope for the one-dose given the supply constraints or a retrial for the more promising half+full dose for greater efficacy. I wonder if people will ask which vaccine they're receiving. 62% is kinda underwhelming when there's two 95% ones (Pfizer/Moderna), a 92% one (Gamaleya), and a 79-86% one (Sinopharm). With the latter two also not needing subzero temps.

jsnell 6y ago
The announcement [0] says they are going to prioritize everyone in risk groups getting their first shot over some people getting two, and as a result might have up to 12 weeks between the two shots. That seems like a reasonable way of dealing with the supply constraints, without entirely throwing out the protocol established via testing. [0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/oxford-universityastrazeneca-vaccine-authorised-by-uk-medicines-regulator https://www.gov.uk/government/news/oxford-universityastrazen...
- pstrateman 6y ago
  If you're in a high risk group surely you want the more effective vaccine? I doubt you can have both (even if safe, it's not tested at all).
  - MrAlex94 6y ago
    Both vaccines seem to stop hospitalisations completely, which seems to be the most important part. > No hospitalisations or severe disease observed in the vaccinated groups from three weeks after first dose https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-12-08-first-peer-reviewed-results-phase-3-human-trials-oxford-coronavirus-vaccine# https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-12-08-first-peer-reviewed-res...
  - andylynch 6y ago
    Given the choice, yes but anything now is better than something in a few months, time, especially looking at current UK mortality rates. These are now rivalling the first wave, even with treatments learning in the last nine months and NHS fully geared up.

kjakm 6y ago

Interesting shift in strategy. Instead of giving the second dose within a few weeks of the first they’re going to allow up to 12 weeks between doses. Allows them to get more widespread level of some protection with dose 1 before later boosting protection.

interdrift 6y ago
Good idea indeed!
neals 6y ago
What would be interesting about that is what happens when people are not going to get the booster for various reasons.
- jimmygrapes 6y ago
  Mutation?
  - f6v 6y ago
    Mutations happen all the time regardless of vaccines. The vaccine adds evolutionary pressure and will likely give an advantage to the bearers of particular mutations.
    - ptaipale 6y ago
      If the virus has a smaller base of infected people who grow it, there will be less mutations. From that point of view, the sooner all the world is vaccinated, the better. The risk of a new, more dangerous mutation decreases.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I think early data showed that you still get ~60% protection with the first shot (or was that for the Moderna vaccine?) Still, you get some level of immunity, booster only makes it higher.

raverbashing 6y ago

It's not clear if this is on an emergency basis or not. Also interestingly, the UK has not approved the Moderna shot yet

kjakm 6y ago
I believe the UK has relatively few orders of the Moderna vaccine whereas they are highly reliant on the Oxford one. Makes sense for the regulatory to put all resources on Oxford once Biontech had been approved and then (I presume) look at Moderna next.
chippiewill 6y ago
UK deliveries of the Moderna vaccine aren't until April or later (and only 5m doses total) AFAIK so the Government / MHRA have probably placed it on the backburner.

xiphias2 6y ago

The whole article skips the question of the differences between the 60% and 90%. We still don't know the effectiveness on old people, but that seems to be the main differentiator. Not writing that in the article is dishonest.

interdrift 6y ago

Brexit might have some benefits after all. Let the competition begin!

quonn 6y ago
Any EU member can always approve any vaccine independently.
- oblio 6y ago
  It's almost like EU countries tend to trust the joint efforts and don't generally go at it alone. Well, with the obvious exception that happened this year (Brexit).
drawfloat 6y ago
The vaccine was developed prior to the end of the transition agreement, and the UK already had protocols for approving vaccines before rest of the EU (see Pfizer). What's this got to do with Brexit?
- karimtr 6y ago
  The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has unfortunately been heavily politicized in the UK. The reporting around it has always sounded a bit nationalistic. For the past few months, the government has been using every opportunity to justify Brexit. The vaccine approval process being one of those.
  - DrBazza 6y ago
    I disagree. I don't think it's been "heavily" politicized, or even moderately, though I'm happy for you to point me to a clip or link of the Government taking claim for it? > The reporting around it has always sounded a bit nationalistic. The press have certainly reported that it's British developed, and why not? I'd say they equally reported that the Moderna vaccine was developed by Turkish Germans/German Turks.

lawrenceyan 6y ago

<70% effectiveness is...not so great to say the least when you have vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna at 95% effectiveness already.

MrAlex94 6y ago
There are many factors at play: * Cost of vaccine * Ease of manufacturing * Ease of distribution * Prevention of severe cases and hospitalisations It seems all vaccines currently approved so far prevent hospitalisations completely. It won’t stop the epidemic completely depending on coverage but it’s enough to stop killing people.
cranekam 6y ago
The half + full dose regime appears to have greater efficacy but wasn't approved because of insufficient data. I hope more data comes in and permits this. Also: "However, unpublished data suggests that leaving a longer gap between the first and second doses increases the overall effectiveness of the jab." That may well help too. But at the end of the day, the world needs a lot of vaccine. It's better to have Pfizer/Moderna and the Oxford vaccine at our disposal, particularly when the latter is also much cheaper and easier to store (this will be crucial in developing countries and/or rural populations). What matters is having fewer people get sick or die, not ensuring everyone is given the vaccine with the greatest efficacy.
- grey-area 6y ago
  The world would have 2x the vaccine available if they can fast track approval of the lower first dose. Hopefully given the prevalence in the UK they can now quickly do that work.
  - snovv_crash 6y ago
    That assumes the bottleneck is in the actual vaccine constituents, and not in manufacturing or sourcing the billions of delivery mechanisms.

iainmerrick 6y ago

Does anyone have a good link for the current status of the Gamaleya (Sputnik V) vaccine? I’ve been hearing and reading a lot of FUD about it, but if you were to take the (self reported) stats in this BBC article at face value it looks like one of the best options. I found eg this Wired article that talks a lot about the geopolitical maneuvering of Russia/China/India in Africa and South America: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/russia-covid-vaccine-sputnik-v https://www.wired.co.uk/article/russia-covid-vaccine-sputnik... But really, despite a lot of pejorative language in there -- “Once they have this relationship, they can extort whatever they want” -- it just sounds like the same strategy the UK has been attempting (both politically, and in terms of vaccine development and approval), except the Russian version sounds more successful so far. Edit to add: apologies in advance for dragging politics into this! But it seems like politics and vaccines are unfortunately intertwined.

DrBazza 6y ago
> it just sounds like the same strategy the UK has been attempting You mean selling the COVID vaccine to 3rd world countries at cost/zero-profit, or others prior to this? https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/23/oxford-astrazeneca-results-covid-vaccine-developing-countries https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/23/o...
- iainmerrick 6y ago
  Well, yes! Substitute “zero profit” with “low cost” and it sounds like the same idea. The key question would seem to be, who can produce and distribute those billions of doses first? Is the AstraZeneca vaccine being produced at a large enough scale already, and/or has the current capacity already been bought up by the EU and other rich countries?
  - DrBazza 6y ago
    "Big Pharma" needs to make a profit from somewhere to finance r&d. 9 in 10 drugs (warning, made up statistic alert) don't reach the market, or something like that. And then they need to spend money on manufacturing. Then of course you have 'generics' when the drug is out of patent and other companies can produce it without royalties. From the BBC article(s) I believe the UK has ordered 100m doses. I have no idea who is producing those though, and how long it takes.

grey-area 6y ago

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved two full doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. That’s the 60% effective version. This is disappointing, hopefully they are working on getting approval for the 90% effective regime. They could vaccinate far more people that way.

agd 6y ago
I believe the 2 doses will be administered 3 months apart. This should help get people their first dose more quickly and there’s a suggestion that this approach also has higher effectiveness.
- grey-area 6y ago
  That sounds good, the article doesn’t make this clear at all.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

throwaway4good 6y ago

This is the type of vaccine that can end the pandemic. Cheap to produce, cheap to distribute, old well-understood technology. Also many countries have the capacity to produce a similar vaccine. For example here is a feel good story from RT about Venezuela buying Russia's similar Sputnik vaccine: https://www.rt.com/news/511063-sputnik-vaccine-venezuela-deal/ https://www.rt.com/news/511063-sputnik-vaccine-venezuela-dea... 10 m. doses to be delivered within 3 months. How long time would it have taken Venezuela to procure a similar amount of mRNA vaccines from Pzifer or Moderna?

cblconfederate 6y ago
> old well-understood technology. While they have been tested in trials for long, all of the adenovirus-based vaccines are new. There is only 1 commercially approved adenovirus vaccine, for rabies in wild animals.
- collyw 6y ago
  That's one more than mRNA vaccines had been approved before the Covid one.
- rplnt 6y ago
  I believe I've read somewhere that US military had been using it for some time. Not sure what for.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  Also J&J's Ebola vaccine, which is IIRC approved in Europe.
mft_ 6y ago
It is not old understood technology. This approach is nearly as new and novel as the RNA vaccines.

alkonaut 6y ago

So because only the 2-full-dose trial had large enough N, that's the one that's approved, so people will be given what is most likely 60% protection even though it's possible, likely even, that if the person administering the vaccine simply doesn't inject the whole first dose - the protection will be higher? What will happen when the 0.5+1 dose trials are finished? Will the dosage recommendation simply be changed then?

collyw 6y ago

Does this vaccine actually provide immunity like normal vaccines? The mRNA one apparently didn't stop you catching or spreading covid which really makes me wonder why it is being pushed so hard when the virus isn't actually a danger to most healthy people under 65.

dharma1 6y ago

Astra has some new unpublished data showing similar efficacy to the mRNA vaccines, and 100% severe COVID prevention. https://archive.is/pMhDo https://archive.is/pMhDo The UK really needs to roll this out fast because the current sudden growth in hospitalisation rates is a disaster, NHS is near full capacity again. I suspect there will be a full lockdown in January too.

jhh 6y ago
It's so odd that he would make these statements in an interview without the data or a press release published. I mean this should be information subject to mandatory publication with regards to their shareholders. Astra has been by far the least trustworthy of the major companies so far. I just hope their jab works anyway.
dm319 6y ago
Yes the UK is about to hit a healthcare meltdown at this point.
Arch-TK 6y ago
From how I see it T4 is already a full lockdown and iirc over half the country is in T4 already so I don't see how things can be much different in January.
- pmg102 6y ago
  There's the 'school closures' lever still to pull. Then there's things like only being allowed out of your house once a day for exercise. And maybe if your work can't be done from home you're paid to stay home and not do it unless it's an essential service? Key things are 1. This is only for a short and bounded time while we roll out vaccine 2. We need to get numbers down so that vaccine rollout isn't impinged

JajT 6y ago

AstraZeneca, Russia's Sputnik V developer to sign cooperation memorandum -Kremlin https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-astrazeneca-russia-idUSKBN28V0Z6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-astraz... So, there is no reason to force down our throats the dubious vaccine from Pfiser which requires -70 C storage facilities. Not to mention of course the its creator has not been vaccinated yet. He said he did not want to take someelse's place.. What a horseshit.

mft_ 6y ago
You mean the CEO of Pfizer? He’s faaaar from being the creator of this vaccine, that was created by scientists in Germany, who were unrelated to Pfizer at the time.

barnacled 6y ago

An issue that I basically never see come up is - why not administer the vaccine earlier on (pre-approval) to the most vulnerable? if P(death|vaccine) < P(death|covid) then it seems really barbaric not to give it. Many dead people now could be alive had that been done (and mRNA candidates were apparently available extremely early on). The Oxford vaccine is a more classical one so wasn't available quite as early, but apparently the mRNA ones were developed in a very short space of time (weeks - months) and future development could cut that even further (and preemptive vaccines for potential pandemic-causing viruses could be kept in stock) - perhaps introducing a Bayesian triage pre-approval could be an important strategy in fighting viruses in the future? In any case this and the mRNA vaccines are really tremendous achievements and somewhat restores my faith in humanity after a terrible year...

odnes 6y ago
> An issue that I basically never see come up is - why not administer the vaccine earlier on (pre-approval) to the most vulnerable? if P(death|vaccine) < P(death|covid) then it seems really barbaric not to give it. Not sure, but I would think it comes down to hospitals not being overrun in the case of a widescale negative response to the vaccine. But since the whole thing is a game of probabilities, I do share your view.
- barnacled 6y ago
  You could distribute it in limited batches to only the most vulnerable which should reduce any risk of that. I think the most vulnerable are in any case most likely to already be heavily using the health services anyway (and would be the ones engaging them the most if they caught the virus).
- hef19898 6y ago
  Because of ethics in drug development. And these rules are there for a reason. Not sure what could have been done better with Covid vaccines, we have three now roughly a year after the first cases. All of them work and are either certified or on the track to soon be. We even have four if you include the Russian one. Summing up the ethics part: Studies include volunteers in a controlled environment. Just administering un approved stuff to people means using people as guinea pigs. I don't want that, and it is doubtful we would have gained anything. Because now it is "simple" distribution and production problem.

KaiserPro 6y ago

This is good news for the UK. However I lack any confidence that the british government will be able to roll this out at any sort of speed. The government has had almost a year to plan for the rollout. Obviously there are some different logisitics for storing the various vaccines, however the last mile infra is exactly the same. There is a plan to train 30k st johns ambulance volunteers, however if they want a smooth rollout, they should have been trained already. This hasn't happened yet. Getting the jabs in the people is only part of the problem, the jab needs to be prescribed, but doctor time is rare (as they are all being hoovered up to provide 45% extra intensive care beds) Not only that, after the jab, you need to watch the patient for anaphylactic shock. This requires nurses, again very much lacking in numbers.

andylynch 6y ago
Good point on the monitoring requirement but not sure why you think this would need a prescription? Normal vaccinations you just go through some questions on risk factors before the nurse gives you the shot, usually on egg allergy, any past reactions and the like. No reason this would be any different.
- KaiserPro 6y ago
  In the UK, All vaccinations are prescribed. Any medicine that is not over the counter needs to be explicitly prescribed before it can be dispensed. (this is what my doctor friends tell me anyway) > Normal vaccinations you just go through some questions on risk factors before the nurse gives you the shot there are nurse prescribers, that have the power to prescribe a limited number of things. That aside, the prescription doesn't need to be done with the patient present. it can be pre-filled with the nurse/other arranging the dispensing. this doesn't mean that the rules can't be changed. I suspect that in time there will be special dispensation given to allow non medical staff to prescribe, dispense and administer jabs. However until the first million or so have been done, they'll want to keep an eye on things and monitor the number of "yellow card" incidents that occur.

habosa 6y ago

60% effective but 100% effective at preventing severe illness. That's really what matters. It's not about making sure nobody gets the virus (none of the vaccines can offer that) it's about making sure we can live with this thing until it goes away. I live in the UK and if they offer this, I'm taking it.

ngcc_hk 6y ago

Internet - source of information, sharing and community. But use to be a totalitarian tool of control by at least one country. Virus - worry about all these from flu, hiv to these. This also turned out to be used for totalitarian control. How do libertarians survived this two front war, I wonder.

dm319 6y ago

The key take-home about this vaccine is it is a more traditional approach using an adenovirus vector, which doesn't have the cold chain logistical constraints of the pfizer vaccine. This means it will be possible to vaccinate in the community away from the cold storage found in large teaching hospitals, and also means that this vaccine can be supplied to parts of the world where it wouldn't otherwise be possible. Apart from a non-selfish point of view that the world should be protected from this virus, I also wonder how important it will be to control the virus in a global scale to reduce the chance of further mutations that may cause another pandemic in the near future.

andygates 6y ago
The other key take-home is that nobody got a serious case so that's 100% effective at preventing the collapse of the healthcare systems of the world. It's really good news all round.

rajman187 6y ago

If we put aside the protocol failure (accidentally giving half dose then full dose), and ignore the fact that they tried to not discuss this for some time until called out on it, of course, you can't stress-test (injection of virus to actually test for immunity) as it's not ethical. So the summary metric is the Vaccine Efficacy, calculated as 1-relative risk, where relative risk is the incidence of infection in the vaccine group relative to the incidence of infection in the control group. So with N = 75 the targeted number of post-dose infections, and V = # vaccinated out of the N, P = # placebo out of the N, are they saying that 100*(1-V/N) is the efficacy ? Then if it's 50%, it actually means you have no benefit over the placebo.

oytis 6y ago

Do I understand it right that they approved it before the phase 3 trial has been completed? In Russia this strategy has led the trial to a failure because people who got placebo would just go and get the real vaccine.

dbbk 6y ago
That is not right at all.
- oytis 6y ago
  That's what I read in AstraZeneca press-release. > The MHRA’s decision was based on ... _interim_ analysis of the Phase III programme > Additional safety and efficacy data for the vaccine will continue to accumulate from _ongoing_ clinical trials. https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020/astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine-authorised-in-uk.html https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020...

amrx431 6y ago

On a different note, some research must be done to investigate such low prevalence and fatality ratio in countries like India and Pakistan.

anovikov 6y ago
Super easy, they just have very, very few old people. Different population pyramids. Hence low fatality ratio. And low prevalence is just because vast majority of people are young and have it asymptomatically. It may also play a role that asymptomatic carriers have lower chance of transmitting infection, so R0 in those countries is lower.
- riprock 6y ago
  Thoughts on countries like Japan with a super-aged population but with low fatality ratio?
  - anovikov 6y ago
    Culture of discipline. If government says you to wear masks, you don't run a rally because not wearing a mask is your "human right". You wear a mask.

jason0597 6y ago

I do not understand why there is a strong sentiment in the comments here about how a 63% efficacy rate is dissapointing. First of all, this is for the 2 doses 4 weeks apart regime, there is already some evidence to suggest that a 1.5 dosing regime results in a higher efficacy, along with other evidence about a theoretical 3 month wait time between the two doses for a higher efficacy rate. Secondly, this vaccine already prevents hospitalisation and severe illness! That's already a game-changer in and of itself. If you vaccinate the 20m or so who are the most vulnerable to COVID-19 and the most likely to require hospitalisation, then you immediately solve the hospitals-may-be-overflowing problem out of the pandemic (which is the only reason we go into lockdown in the first place). This will allow life to return to normal!

mchusma 6y ago

Amazing news, and so happy to see a lot of good sense here from the UK. They have distanced themselves from the US with the fastest approvals of Pfizer and Astrazeneca, the smartest targeting of the population (a focus on saving lives by targeting most vulnerable groups first), and the enormously helpful focus on getting some immunity first before worrying about second doses. The UK is no longer constrained by manufactured doses or anything else. The faster they put that existing supply into people, the faster they are done. They could be done with the pandemic by the end of January.

mattlondon 6y ago
> They could be done with the pandemic by the end of January. There are only 500,000 doses available for the first week of Jan according to Hancock's statement in the commons a few minutes ago, so it will be a while before everyone gets their first dose.
- mchusma 6y ago
  That would be suprising, given the quantity already produced by their partners worldwide. Because of the more standard supply chain they have many manufacturing partners. But I'll look for sources. Astrazeneca was always supposed to be a high volume player vs the others.
- vegannet 6y ago
  My understanding was always that AZ had capacity to produce many billions of doses by year (2021) end, and already had a large supply ready to go: is it possible that “first week of January” is referring specifically to the number of doses that can be administered by then which is limited by more than supply? Distribution, appointments etc. And if so, could we see the second week of January jump substantially? Access to just 500k doses would be a significant shift from the expectations that have been shared so far.
  - kingosticks 6y ago
    In Johnson's press conference just now they said the number of vaccinations was entirely limited by the available supply, not the ability to administer it, nor the distribution of it. They were explicit about this.

homami 6y ago

How long does it take to vaccinate the whole population? I did not look for better sources, but I read in this [1] CNN post that in 2021: AZ is producing 3 billion doses, Pfizer 1.3B and Moderna less than 1B. So in total we are going to have 5 billion doses in 2021. Each person requires two doses. So we end up vaccinating around one third of the world's population. It seems to me even at the end of 2021 our lives will be still far from "normal". Are there other promising vaccines on the way? [1] https://us.cnn.com/2020/12/30/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html https://us.cnn.com/2020/12/30/investing/premarket-stocks-tra...

InTheArena 6y ago

This is a approval for all of the people who said to just allow Hydrochloriquine for everyone, because after all, its a pandemic, and how bad can it be? (turns out, it gave people heart attacks). Not only have AZ lied about their test plans (claiming that the two differing dose was deliberate in the first press releases), lied about who was at fault with dosing errors (they insisted that the Italians where at fault), "pooled" results with different populations to try and make a argument they were not testing for (which critically didn't include people over 55) - they just managed to get the UK to approve a dosing strategy that they never even tested. It's a pandemic - and the UK has invested a lot in both loves and national prestige in this vaccine. But the shortcuts here may come back to haunt. Or it may be what stops this disease in it's tracks. it's a hell of a gamble either way..

standardUser 6y ago
Counterpoint, it's been proven safe based on all available data (which is more than for any other vaccine) and it reliably prevents serious illness even if it doesn't prevent all infections as reliably as the mRNA vaccines. If we want the best possible vaccine, wait 6 months. If we want a safe vaccine that can end the pandemic as quickly as possible, this is the vaccine for the job.
- InTheArena 6y ago
  Except none of that data is actually public yet - and a ton of work is going to have to go into bias-work because of the half-assed pooling work that AZ did.

InTheArena 6y ago

Much more details here - https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/30/vaccine-roundup-late-december https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/30/va...