The EU’s drugs regulator has approved the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine for all adults.
According to BBC, The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said the AstraZeneca vaccine was about 60% effective in the trials on which it based its decision.
The move comes amid a dispute over whether AstraZeneca is breaking its vaccine delivery commitments to the EU.
The European Commission has published its contract with the Anglo-Swedish drug-maker, hoping to show a breach.
The bloc agreed to buy up to 400 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine last year.
In a press conference later on Friday, Astra-Zeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot conceded that it had “teething issues” in the yield of vaccine at some production sites.
“We’re talking about biology manufacturing here,” he said, adding – “it’s not like doing an orange juice.”
Mr Soriot said AstraZeneca had millions of doses ready to ship to the EU, and was working 24/7 to increase capacity.
The European Commission has now given final approval for the vaccine.
According to an analysis by health editor of BBC, it would have been very surprising if EU regulators had not given the go-ahead for this vaccine that they have been pre-ordering hundreds of millions of doses of. The UK approved it weeks ago, and millions of people in Britain have already received their first shot that should give them protection very soon.
Trials show it is highly effective at preventing severe illness and deaths from coronavirus. But there have been questions about how well it works in people aged 65 and above, because there isn’t as much data for that age group – fewer than 10% of the trial volunteers were in this age bracket. However, there is other evidence to suggest the vaccine works very well in older adults.
Studies show that, like other age groups, the over-65s have a strong immune response to the vaccine. After receiving the shots their blood has plenty of the required antibodies that can fight the coronavirus. It will be up to individual countries to decide who – including which age groups – to offer the shots to.
The bigger question will be how soon EU nations can get large deliveries of the vaccine. Supplies of this and other Covid vaccines are in huge demand, but there is a limit to how much can be manufactured at pace.