WHO grants emergency authorization for AstraZeneca vaccine

The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved two versions of the AstraZeneca/Oxford coronavirus vaccine for use in WHO’s COVAX program. The organization says the decision will enable more countries to have access to the vaccines. Mariângela Simão, MD, the WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said: “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. 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.” The AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines are the second to be approved for use by COVAX; the Pfizer-BioNTech candidate was earlier approved to achieve COVAX’s goal of distributing 330 million doses to residents of less developed nations in the first half of 2021. WHO noted, “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 4 weeks.”