Pharmaceutical** giant AstraZeneca has formally asked the European Medicines Agency to withdraw its COVID-19 vaccine authorization. READ ALSO:Hopes of HIV cure after breakthrough using gene-editing 'scissors'Billions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were distributed to poorer countries through a U.N.-coordinated program, as it was cheaper and easier to produce and distribute. studies later suggested that the pricier messenger RNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna provided better protection against COVID-19 and its many variants, and most countries switched to those shots. The U.K.'s national coronavirus immunization program in 2021 heavily relied on AstraZeneca's vaccine, which was largely developed by scientists at Oxford University with significant financial government support. But even Britain later resorted to buying the mRNA vaccines for its COVID booster vaccination programs and the AstraZeneca vaccine is now rarely used globally.

Source: Ethiopian News May 08, 2024 14:14 UTC