The United States may not need AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, even if it does get approval for its use, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Reuters.
Fauci, the White House’s top medical adviser on the pandemic, said the US has enough contracts with other manufacturers to vaccinate its entire population, and possibly even enough for booster shots in the fall.
Therefore, he considers that it is highly likely that the country will procure from other manufacturers all the vaccines necessary to satisfy its demand, and that it is not necessary to resort to AstraZeneca doses.
The US has established agreements to immunize its entire population almost twice with the vaccines it has already approved: Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
“If you look at the number (of doses) that we’re going to get, the amount that you can get from Johnson & Johnson, from Novavax, from Moderna, if we hire more, it’s likely that we can handle whatever boost we need, but I can’t say for sure.” Said Fauci.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been questioned in the US since late last year due to delays in its clinical trial in the country. The drugmaker has tens of millions of doses stored unused in US facilities.
The Joe Biden administration authorized the shipment of more than 4 million doses to Mexico and Canada, countries that have already approved the formula, as part of a vaccine loan.
Is the AstraZeneca vaccine safe?
AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford published results from a previous trial in late 2020 with two different efficacy readings, as a consequence of a dosing error.
Last March, more than a dozen countries temporarily suspended AstraZeneca injections due to reports of unusual blood clots in the brains of people who were vaccinated.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said that so far it cannot be assured that the vaccine is responsible for the unusual clots that have presented a small number of vaccinated. In any case, they claimed that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh any risks.
Scientists and drug safety regulators around the world are trying to find out if the vaccine is actually causing these strokes, and how great the risk could be, but there are no conclusive answers yet.
The scientific community is working to find out if the reported clots are a side effect or a coincidence that would have occurred naturally.