The World Health Organization (WHO) said it had approved two AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine variants for emergency use, giving the green light for these vaccines to be rolled out globally.
The drugs can now be used in the COVAX program for the fair distribution of vaccines in globally. 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.
In the case of the two AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines, WHO assessed the quality, safety and efficacy data, risk management plans and programmatic suitability, such as cold chain requirements. The process took under four weeks.
It is the second vaccine to be officially approved by WHO for emergency use.
The vaccine was reviewed on 8 February by WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE), which makes recommendations for vaccines’ use in populations.
The AstraZeneca/Oxford product is a viral vectored vaccine called ChAdOx1-S. ChAdOx1-S has been found to have 63.09% efficacy and is suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements.
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