Will AstraZeneca save the world?

It’s gone from British success story to cast off the booster list. But as the world reels from Omicron, does the Oxford vaccine have a future being rolled out across Africa? Kate Wills reports

THE NHS website couldn’t cope with demand, crash-ing under the strain of so many people trying to book their boosters this week. The emergence of the Omicron variant and its timing, in the run-up to Christmas, have fuelled the rush for jabs. But this time around, AstraZeneca is prominent by its absence. The home-grown jab, once hailed by Boris Johnson as “a wonderful British scientific achievement”, was passed over in favour of Pfizer for the booster roll-out, and it looked like a serious snub for the Anglo-Swedish drug company. So what happened? And if AZ is not needed in the UK, could it have a critical role to play in preventing new variants?

“AstraZeneca is destined for lower and middle-income countries now,” explains Professor Azeem Majeed, head of the department of primary care and public health at Imperial College London. “It served us well in the first stage of the vaccine roll-out, but it would take a big shift in government policy to bring it back in the UK.”

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has decided it is not quite as effective as mRNA vaccines — which teach our cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response — as a booster shot. There have also been concerns about a rare blood-clotting side effect, although today scientists said they believe they have found the “trigger” that leads to this.