The United Kingdom approved this Thursday the vaccine against Covid-19 from the Franco-Austrian laboratory Valneva.
The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency announced in a statement that it is giving regulatory approval to the product, and the UK regulator says it is the first in the world to fully approve the vaccine.
“The Independent Commission for Medicinal Products for Human Use and its expert task force on Covid-19 have carefully reviewed the available evidence and (…) the benefit/risk ratio is positive,” said Professor Munir Pirmohamed, chairman of this commission, quoted in this press release.
Unlike Pfizer or Moderna products, Valneva does not use the messenger RNA technique, but the more common and conventional inactivated virus technique. It can be stored at the temperature of conventional refrigerators, and is in this sense quite easy to use. The Valneva vaccine can be used in people aged 18 to 50, with the first and second doses taken at least 28 days apart.
This vaccine, the sixth to be approved in the United Kingdom (after AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen and Novavax) has also been ordered by the European Commission, for 60 million doses in 2022 and 2023. Bahrain has also also granted an emergency authorization for the Valneva vaccine at the beginning of March.
The United Kingdom has been particularly bereaved by the Covid-19 pandemic, with more than 170,000 dead. With the abandonment of most health restrictions, the number of contaminations remains rather high. The British Office for National Statistics estimated that 4.26 million people were infected with the virus the week of March 20, the maximum since the start of the pandemic, for a population of 67 million. The health authorities have also proposed the administration of a fourth dose of vaccine to the most vulnerable people.