The UK became the first western country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine with its regulator clearing Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s shot ahead of decisions in the US and European Union. Prime Minister Boris Johnson touted the medicine authority’s approval as a global win and a ray of hope amid the gloom of the novel coronavirus which has killed nearly 1.5 million people globally, hammered the world economy and upended normal life.
Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) granted emergency use approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which they say is 95% effective in preventing illness, in record time – just 23 days since Pfizer published the first data from its final-stage clinical trial. The vaccine will be available in Britain from next week, according to a government statement. The U.K. regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said on Wednesday that the vaccine “met its strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness.”
The U.K. had signalled it would move swiftly in approving a vaccine to protect its population, and doctors across the country were put on standby for a possible rollout. For the government, it’s an opportunity to make up for missteps during the pandemic as Britain’s death toll nears 60,000. The vaccines require two doses 21 days apart, with strong immunity response kicking in after seven days of the second dose. The MHRA said it will continue to monitor the data on a rolling basis once the vaccines are deployed among the British public.
The UK’s vaccine committee will now decide on the priority groups on whom the vaccine will be administered. “Residents in care homes for older adults and care home workers are the highest priority,” said Wei Shen Lim, the chairperson of UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. China has given authorisation to its three front-runners for emergency use. Russia cleared a vaccine known as Sputnik V in August, while a second inoculation was approved in October, even as the last stage of trials to establish safety and efficacy are still taking place. The British government in late November invoked a special rule allowing its drug regulator to move ahead of the EU as the country prepares for the Brexit transition period to conclude at the end of this year.
The U.K. has ordered enough doses of the two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to immunise 20 million people. The companies also have deals to supply hundreds of millions of shots to Europe, the U.S., Japan and elsewhere.