British government plans to approve Oxford vaccine, distribute starting Jan. 4https://www.foxnews.com/world/british-government-plans-to-approve-oxford-vaccine-distribute-starting-jan-4The Oxford COVID-19 vaccine will be distributed across the U.K. starting January 4 if it is approved, according to a report by the Sunday Telegraph.
The British government has set a goal of vaccinating two million people within two weeks of starting distribution.
The plan includes doses from either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, according to the Telegraph.
The minimum approvable efficacy for a vaccine, apparently, is 50%. A manufacturing error, affecting Brazil's tests IIRC, messed up the homogeneity of AstraZeneca's data (is the efficacy 62%? 75%? ##%?), but even 62% meets the minimum approvable efficacy. So in that sense AstraZeneca's vaccine has been known for several to be approvable, but regulocrats like data consistency, and not unreasonably so. Evidently UK regulocrats are satisfied, which suggests the FDA might be next (though I haven't yet seen reports that AstraZeneca has requested EUA).
Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccines use mRNA technology, the first vaccines to be approved that use that technology. AstraZeneca's vaccine uses a technology akin to that used in gene-splicing therapies, so it is neither mRNA nor traditional weakened virus technology. 62%/75%/??% efficacy vs. 94%-95% efficacy would be an interesting choice, though whether or not would-be recipients would have a choice available is doubtful, early on at least.
