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By Kate Holton, Josephine Mason and Kate Kelland
LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca said on
Monday its COVID-19 vaccine could be around 90% effective,
giving the world's fight against the global pandemic a new
weapon, cheaper to make, easier to distribute and faster to
scale-up than rivals.
The British drugmaker said it will have as many as 200
million doses by the end of 2020, around four times as many as
U.S. competitor Pfizer.
Seven hundred million doses could be ready globally as soon
as the end of the first quarter of 2021.
"This means we have a vaccine for the world," said Andrew
Pollard, director of the Oxford University vaccine group that
developed the drug.
The vaccine was 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 when it
was administered as a half dose followed by a full dose at least
a month later, according to data from late-stage trials in
Britain and Brazil. No serious safety events were confirmed, the
company said.
The vaccine's cost to governments works out at just a few
dollars a shot, a fraction of the price of shots from Pfizer and
Moderna, which use a more unconventional technology.
It can also be transported and stored at normal fridge
temperatures, which proponents say would make it easier to
distribute, especially in poor countries, than Pfizer's, which
needs to be shipped and stored at -70C.
The faster roll-out means both rich and poor countries that
had been drawing up plans to ration vaccines can distribute them
more widely, helping to eventually halt the massive social and
economic disruption of a pandemic that has killed 1.4 million
people.
"The bulk of the vaccine rollout programme will be in
January, February, March. And we hope that sometime after Easter
things will be able to start to get back to normal," said Matt
Hancock, health secretary of Britain which has pre-ordered 100
million doses for its 67 million people.
In poor countries, where the logistics of distributing rival
vaccines posed a bigger challenge, the effect of a cheaper and
easier alternative could be even more pronounced. Zahid Maleque,
health minister of Bangladesh, which is buying in 30 million
doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine made in India, called the
findings "really good news".
"The big advantage of having the vaccine is that it can be
stored, transported and handled at 2-8 degrees Celsius, and we
have that storage facility," he said.
"WE'LL BE A LOT HAPPIER"
The results showed the effectiveness of AstraZeneca's
vaccine depended on the dosing, and fell to just 62% when given
as two full doses rather than a half-dose first.
Scientists cautioned, however, against seeing this as
evidence that it would be less useful than rivals. Vaccines from
Pfizer and Moderna each prevented about 95% of cases according
to interim data from their late-stage trials.
The researchers did not say what proportion of the 131 cases
of COVID-19 in the study received the smaller initial dose.
"I think it is a real fool's errand to start trying to pick
these three (Pfizer/Moderna/Astra) apart on the basis of
snippets of phase 3 data from press releases," said Danny
Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London.
"For the bigger picture, my suspicion is that by the time we
are a year down the line, we'll be using all three vaccines with
about 90% protection - and we'll be a lot happier."
Researchers don't know the exact reason why a smaller first
dose proved more effective.
"There are some examples where changing the way you prime
the immune system, can result in a better response," Pollard
said.
Pascal Soriot, Astra's chief executive, said it was good
news, as more people could be vaccinated faster with a limited
supply.
Shares and oil prices rose amid hopes another vaccine
candidate would revive the global economy with U.S. stock
futures trading higher and the STOXX index of Europe's 600
largest shares gaining 0.5% to its highest since
February.
AstraZeneca's own shares fell 1.8% as traders perceived the
efficacy data as disappointing compared with rivals. Pfizer and
Moderna set the bar for success sky-high. The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration has said any shot would need to prevent disease
or decrease severity in at least 50% of those vaccinated.
The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a modified version of a
chimpanzee common cold virus to deliver instructions to cells to
fight the target virus, a traditional approach to vaccine
development and different from the path taken by Pfizer and
Moderna, which rely on new technology known as messenger RNA
(mRNA).
AstraZeneca, one of Britain's most valuable listed
companies, will now immediately prepare regulatory submission of
the data to authorities around the world that have a framework
in place for conditional or early approval.
It will also seek an emergency use listing from the World
Health Organization to speed up availability in low-income
countries. In parallel, the full analysis of the interim results
is being submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is likely to approve
in mid-December the distribution of the vaccine made by Pfizer,
according to a top official of the U.S. government's vaccine
development effort.
(Additional reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu, Alistair Smout
and Ruma Paul; Writing by Peter Graff:
Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Christopher Cushing and Carmel
Crimmins)
