AstraZeneca's COVID-19 Vaccine Approaches European Approval

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) confirmed it had received an application for conditional marketing authorization for an experimental COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University on January 12, 2021. The assessment of the vaccine, known as COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, will proceed under an accelerated timeline, stated the EMA.

If the EMA concludes that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks in protecting against COVID‑19, it will recommend granting conditional marketing authorization. The European Commission will then fast-track its decision-making process to grant conditional marketing authorization for its Member States.

The AstraZeneca COVID-19 (AZD1222) coronavirus vaccine candidate, formerly known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is made from a virus (ChAdOx1), a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) that causes infections in chimpanzees, that has been genetically changed so that it can't grow in humans. Genetic material has been added to the ChAdOx1 construct, which is used to make proteins from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus called Spike glycoprotein.