The AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine was confirmed by experts to have 70.4 percent average efficacy in an interim analysis of Phase 3 trial results, published in a peer-reviewed paper.

AstraZeneca and Oxford University became the first COVID-19 vaccine makers to publish final-stage clinical trial results in a scientific journal Tuesday, marking a key milestone in the global race to securing safe and effective vaccines.

AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine showed no severe side effects/hospitalizations

Findings showed there were zero hospitalizations or cases of severe side effects three weeks after the first dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine was given to around 11,600 volunteers in the United Kingdom and Brazil.

According to the peer-reviewed paper, the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine has efficacy of 90 percent in a small group who got a half-dose first, but only 62 percent in the majority.

Still, experts lauded the development of AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate. AstraZeneca and Oxford University have already sought regulatory approval after the announcement of the vaccine's efficacy.

"This is probably the best day we've had in 2020," Oxford University's professor Sarah Gilbert told reporters. "We now see our vaccine is safe and it is highly effective."

Regulators will decide the dosing regimen for AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine

Individual regulatory bodies in the U.K., Europe, and the United States will be the ones to ultimately give the green light as to which dosing regimen is appropriate.

“Our job as scientists is to generate the data and make that publicly available for people to scrutinize and scientists to scrutinize and also now for the regulators and policymakers to scrutinize. These decisions are not for us to make,” said Prof Andrew Pollard of Oxford University, chief investigator on the trials.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seemed to be extremely thorough in giving a go-ahead. FDA raised concerns about the limited ethnicity data in the trials and the absence of older people at the highest risk, as most participants were under 55, according to The Guardian.

“We will be submitting the data to the FDA, but our best assumption is that we will need the study readout from the U.S. before we are likely to get approval,” said Mene Pangalos, executive vice-president of biopharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca.

The U.K. earlier became the first to distribute the clinically approved Pfizer-BioNTech-COVID-19 vaccine.

Marking a decisive turning point in the COVID-19 fight, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan earlier became the first recipient of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in the U.K., with the country starting a global immunization program dubbed as "V-Day."

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