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Oxford/AZ COVID-19 vaccine to be discontinued

Considering reduced global demand for COVID vaccines, AstraZeneca has deemed there is no long-term value in investing in manufacturing the adenovirus-based vaccine.

AstraZeneca COVID vaccine

Credit: Viacheslav Lopatin / Shutterstock.com

Withdrawal of the marketing authorisation for the COVID-19 vaccine (ChAdOx1-S [recombinant]) Vaxzevria (SRD) by the European Medicines Agency on 7 May, follows a request by AstraZeneca.

“Global demand for all COVID vaccines is now much lower and overall supply exceeds demand. This is in marked contrast to the early part of the pandemic when supply was limited and distribution very limited, especially in poorer countries.

Case for withdrawing the AstraZeneca vaccine

there is probably no commercial case for continuing to manufacture and distribute the vaccine and I think this is likely to be the main reason the company have decided to discontinue making and selling it”

“Accordingly, there is probably no commercial case for continuing to manufacture and distribute the vaccine and I think this is likely to be the main reason the company have decided to discontinue making and selling it. [The treatment] saved very large numbers of lives in many countries around the world particularly in 2021 and 2022, both because it was developed and tested so rapidly and because AstraZeneca made it available at very low cost so that it could be used in many of the poorer countries in the world,” Professor Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics, University of Bristol shared.

Further academic comment

“The Oxford/AstraZeneca adenovirus-based vaccine was designed for rapid global deployment and was the least expensive of all the [options] that were available in the early stages of the pandemic, coming in at only $4-8 dollars a shot. This meant that it had a huge global reach, 100 million doses being commissioned by the UK Vaccine Taskforce in July 2020. This overshadowed the mRNA vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (90 and 17 million doses respectively at that time). The mRNA vaccines cost between $20 and $30 per shot and needed a full cold chain, making them unavailable in resource-poor setting. In the face of alternative vaccines that can be rapidly updated… the decision to cease issuing this type of vaccine is logical,” Professor Peter Openshaw, Professor of Experimental Medicine, Imperial College London explained.

In the company’s other recent developments, earlier this month AstraZeneca released promising data for a novel BTK inhibitor indicated to treat mantle cell lymphoma.