LONDON – Britain is preparing to review its legislation to allow emergency use of any effective vaccine that opposes coronaviruses before it is fully authorised, but if vaccines meet the required standards of protection and quality.
On Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government said it was adopting “enhanced safeguards” to allow the country’s drug regulatory firm to grant transitory authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine, provided it meets standards of protection and quality.
The proposed regulation would allow coronavirus vaccines to obtain emergency approval that allows others to be vaccinated while the full authorization procedure is completed. As a general rule, vaccines are only used after the license review is completed, a procedure that can take several months.
“If we expand effective vaccines, it is vital that they are available to patients as temporarily as possible, but only once the strict protection criteria have been met,” Jonathan Van-Tam, the UK’s deputy medical director, said in a statement.
Britain said the resolution is a “precautionary measure” and will only be used as a last hotel if there is an urgent justification for public fitness.
Officials said they would also increase the number of fitness personnel who can administer vaccines and explain the type of liability coverage for this additional workforce.
The government is beginning an era of three-week consultations to search for information from fitness experts and other stakeholders. He said the measures could be initiated in October.
Britain has recorded more than 41,500 deaths from COVID-19, the worst record of any European country, and its daily number of cases has increased slowly in recent weeks. The new infections averaged about 1,000 consistent with last week’s day. At the height of the epidemic in Britain, it was around 5,000 cases per day, experts suspect that it may have been much more consistent due to insufficient evidence.
The United Kingdom has signed several agreements with prescription drugs for COVID-19 vaccines. It hopes to get the first shipments of an experimental vaccine developed through the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca this fall, while complex tests are still underway to test the effectiveness of the injection.
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