The authorization relied on data from late-stage clinical trials in Britain and Brazil. India’s drug regulator is also expected to decide soon whether to authorize the vaccine, which is being manufactured there by a local vaccine producer, the Serum Institute. A decision is further off in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration is waiting for data from a separate clinical trial. The study was halted in September and delayed for nearly seven weeks — much longer than in other countries — as regulators investigated whether an illness in a participant in Britain was related to the vaccine. Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said in a radio interview on Monday that “it makes a lot of sense to get started with as many people as possible” by delaying the second dose.

Source: New York Times December 30, 2020 07:41 UTC