Study results continue to pile in showing that the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective, yet it’s crickets when it comes to getting Emergency Use Authorization of the vaccine here in the U.S. The entire European Union as well as the U.K have authorized its use and are administering the vaccine big time… but not here in the U.S.
Now that vaccination infrastructure is really ramping up – especially within the federal pharmacy and community health center direct shipment programs it’s getting increasingly frustrating to see nation after nation authorizing use of the AstraZeneca vaccine yet we are unable to deploy it to our communities.
Previous clinical trial data has been showing that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective, and now a new study published in The Lancet this week that shows real-world evidence of the same. The study (in pre-print) entitled Efficacy of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AstraZeneca) Vaccine Against SARS-CoV-2 VOC 202012/01 (B.1.1.7) finds that the AstraZeneca vaccine is reducing hospital admissions from covid-19 in Scotland by 85%.
A study published a couple of weeks ago of the Phase III AstraZeneca candidate vaccine found that it not only protects people from serious illness and death but also substantially slows the transmission of the virus. That was published in The Lancet. See blog post: New Data Published On the Key AztraZeneca Vaccine: Promising Results
The U.S. government has a contract with AstraZeneca that’s even bigger than the contracts with Moderna and Pfizer combined and manufacturing has been underway during the clinical trials. The new AstraZeneca vaccine could really help push us to the end of this pandemic much faster if we could get it authorized here and deploy it to pharmacies and community health centers.
What I can’t figure out is what’s taking the Emergency Use Application so long?
