The European Medicines Agency s EU conditional marketing authorisations for COVID-19 vaccines thelancet.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thelancet.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
iPolitics By Charlie Pinkerton. Published on Dec 30, 2020 11:00am A COVID-19 vaccination being administered. (Rick Madonik/Toronto Star)
Dispersed in home offices throughout the nation’s capital are dozens of Health Canada’s most qualified civil servants, making up quite possibly the government’s most important bureaucratic teams in this phase of the pandemic.
They’re epidemiologists, toxicologists, pharmacologists, biochemists, virologists, immunologists, microbiologists, and clinical experts, and they’re the gatekeepers for the mass immunization of Canadians against the coronavirus.
Their thankless task spending days analyzing hundreds of thousands of pages of data would normally take the department one year for a single product. Given the pressure of the pandemic, they’ll complete the 2,000-hour job in a matter of months.
It only needs normal refrigeration to remain viable, which makes it easier to distribute. AstraZeneca’s Chief Executive Pascal Soriot also said the vaccine should be effective against the new variant of coronavirus that was found to be more contagious with cases reported in the UK and the US.
Vials with a sticker reading, COVID-19 / Coronavirus vaccine / Injection only and a medical syringe are seen in front of a displayed AstraZeneca logo in this illustration taken October 31, 2020. [FIle, Dado Ruvic, Illustration]
The first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be administered in the UK from Monday.
Approval in the UK is a major sign of confidence in the vaccine for Kenya and others who have ordered the Oxford vaccine, but it is the European Union s consent that will make it accessible to Africa.