Here’s Why Globally Successful AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Hasn’t Been Approved in United States
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is shipping its 2-dose COVID-19 vaccine all over the world, but has yet to secure approval in the United States. Why?
That’s the gist of explainer journo Ezra Klein’s question, posed in a tweet responding to the vaccine’s positive results overseas.
“Do any public health experts think these results are wrong, and Scotland made a terrible error approving the AZ vaccine?” Klein wrote of findings that “In Scotland, the AstraZeneca vaccine reduced the risk of #COVID19-related hospitalization by **94%** after the first of 2 doses.”
“And if not, are we making a terrible error with every subsequent day we fail to approve it? It seems to me you need to believe one of these things is true,” Klein added.
Do any public health experts think these results are wrong, and Scotland made a terrible error approving the AZ vaccine?
And if not, are we making a terrible error with every subsequent day we fail to approve it?
It seems to me you need to believe one of these things is true. https://t.co/gvvDKgLBXv
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) March 9, 2021
As it turns out, there is a third choice: that AstraZeneca has yet to apply for approval from the FDA.
Currently, there are three vaccines — the two-dose shots from Moderna and Pfizer and the one-shot version from Johnson & Johnson — currently in use in the United States, and President Joe Biden recently announced that there should be sufficient supplies of those vaccines to immunize the entire country by the end of May.
But AstraZeneca’s vaccine, currently shipping to 142 countries according to the company, could add another 50 million doses to the effort if all goes well. AstraZeneca executive vice president Ruud Dobber recently told CBS News that they plan to seek approval from the FDA within the next several weeks.
“We are prepared to supply tens of millions of doses after the Emergency Use Authorization,” and that the company hopes to see results from its U.S. clinical trial “within the next several weeks,” and once that EUA is approved, “we’re planning to deliver roughly 50 million doses instantly to Americans.”
He also said that the company is “very hopeful that it’s very effective against the U.K. variant,” and that they are also “developing a potential new vaccine in case our current vaccine is not as effective as we were hoping for.”
Watch above via CBS News.
