WHO Approves Two Versions Of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Including SII's Covishield For Emergency Use

The World Health Organization (WHO) has listed two versions of the AstraZeneca/Oxford Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use including Covishield, which is produced by the Serum Institute of India.

The other version is produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (Republic of Korea), the WHO said on Monday (15 February).

The approval of these vaccines means giving the green light for them to be rolled out globally through COVAX.

WHO's Emergency Use Listing (EUL) allows countries to expedite their own regulatory approval to import and administer Covid-19 vaccines.

"Countries with no access to vaccines to date will finally be able to start vaccinating their health workers and populations at risk, contributing to the COVAX Facility's goal of equitable vaccine distribution," Mariangela Simao, WHO Assistant-Director General for Access to Medicines and Health Products, said in a statement.

'But we must keep up the pressure to meet the needs of priority populations everywhere and facilitate global access. To do that, we need two things -- a scale-up of manufacturing capacity, and developers' early submission of their vaccines for WHO review."

In the case of the two AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines, WHO assessed the quality, safety and efficacy data, risk management plans and programmatic suitability, such as cold chain requirements. The process took under four weeks, the WHO said in a statement.

The vaccine was reviewed on 8 February by WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE), which makes recommendations for vaccines’ use in populations (i.e. recommended age groups, intervals between shots, advice for specific groups such as pregnant and lactating women). The SAGE recommended the vaccine for all age groups 18 and above.

The AstraZeneca/Oxford product is a viral vectored vaccine called ChAdOx1-S (recombinant).

It is being produced at several manufacturing sites, as well as in the Republic of Korea and India.

ChAdOx1-S has been found to have 63.09 per cent efficacy and is suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements.

The WHO earlier approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use.

(With inputs from IANS)