After more than three billion doses, the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is being withdrawn.
AstraZeneca said it was “incredibly proud” of the vaccine but had made a commercial decision.
He said the increase in new variants of the coronavirus meant that demand had shifted to newer, updated vaccines.
His vaccine was credited with saving millions of lives during the pandemic, but it also caused rare, and sometimes fatal, blood clots.
In the race to lift the world from pandemic lockdowns, the Covid vaccine was developed by scientists at the University of Oxford in record time. A process that normally takes 10 years was sped up to about 10 months.
In November 2020, it was announced as the “vaccine for the world” as it was much cheaper and easier to stockpile than other Covid vaccines. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca had agreed to mass-produce it.
Initially, it was the cornerstone of the UK’s plans to vaccinate our way out of lockdown.
“The truth is that it made a huge difference, it was what got us out of the disaster that was unfolding at the time, in combination with Pfizer’s other vaccine,” said Professor Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol.
However, its reputation suffered as unusual blood clots emerged as a rare side effect of the vaccine and the UK turned to alternatives.
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In a statement, AstraZeneca said: βAccording to independent calculations, over 6.5 million lives were saved in the first year of use alone.
“Our efforts have been recognized by governments around the world and are widely seen as a critical component in ending the global pandemic.”
It said the development of new vaccines that better match the mutated forms of Covid now on the market meant there was a “surplus of updated vaccines available”, leading to “reduced demand” for its vaccine which is “no longer being manufactured”. or provided’.
Professor Finn added: βI think the withdrawal of the vaccine simply reflects that it is no longer useful.
“It turned out that this virus is very mobile and has evolved away from the original vaccines, so in a sense they have become irrelevant and only the reformulated vaccines are likely to be used now.”