Oxford/AstraZeneca Vaccine Approved for Use in UK

The United Kingdom has approved another coronavirus vaccine for use, weeks after the country became the first in the world to start inoculating its citizens.

In a statement, the UK government said the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had authorized Oxford University/AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine following "rigorous clinical trials and a thorough analysis of the data by experts at the MHRA."

The UK is the first country to approve the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine.

The vaccine had met "strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness," the statement added.

"The NHS has a clear vaccine delivery plan and decades of experience in delivering large scale vaccination programmes. It has already vaccinated hundreds of thousands of patients with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and its roll out will continue. Now the NHS will begin putting their extensive preparations into action to roll out the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine."

Previously, the team developing the vaccine said it had an "an average efficacy of 70%," with one dosing regimen showing an efficacy of 90%.

"Excitingly, we've found that one of our dosing regimens may be around 90% effective and if this dosing regime is used, more people could be vaccinated with planned vaccine supply," Andrew Pollard, chief investigator of the Oxford Vaccine Trial, said in November.

AstraZeneca has promised to supply hundreds of millions of doses to low and middle-income countries, and to deliver the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis to those nations in perpetuity.

The vaccine -- developed at England's Oxford University -- is significantly cheaper than the others and, crucially, it would be far easier to transport and distribute in...