AZTRAZENECA

AstraZeneca-Oxford-SII ‘Covishield’

Also known as Covishield, the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca in collaboration with the Serum Institute of India (SII) had proved its efficacy in animals early in the pandemic.

AstraZeneca-Oxford was the first to publish a scientific paper on a Phase III clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine, in November 2020.

While the trials showed that the vaccine can protect humans from Covid-19, several questions were raised on its data leaving some unanswered questions. Covishield is developed by genetically engineering an adenovirus that normally infects chimpanzees. Once the vaccine had proved effective in monkeys, the Phase I/II trials were started in April 2020.

While the Phase II/III trials were conducted in the UK and India, Phase III trials were conducted in Brazil, South Africa and the United States. After clarifying doubts on its clinical trial data, the vaccine proved itself to be as effective as vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.

On December 30, 2020, Britain authorized the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

So far, AstraZeneca has signed a deal for 300 million doses with the US; 400 million doses for the European Union and 170 million doses with Covax—an international collaboration which aims to ensure global equitable access to Covid vaccines. The Serum Institute has also applied for vaccine authorization in India.