FDA’s Domingo: AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has most global emergency use permits granted

AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine tops the field in terms of number of emergency use authorization (EUA) secured from regulatory authorities around the world while Chinese COVID-19 vaccine brands lag behind, Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Director General Eric Domingo said Tuesday.

Domingo revealed this in a presentation during the Laging Handa briefing which showed AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine—developed by the British government and Oxford University—securing 91 EUAs, including one from the World Health Organization (WHO).

This was followed by Pfizer-BioNTech (United States) with 82, followed by Gamaleya (Russia) with 62, Moderna (United States) with 46,  and Janssen (United States) with 40, including WHO.

Sinopharm (Beijing), a Chinese brand, ranked sixth with 35 EUAs, followed by Covishield by Serum Institute of India with 33, including WHO.

Rounding up the rest of the field are Sinovac with 22 EUAs, Bharat BioTech’s Covaxin with six, Cansino with five, Anhui Zhifei Longcom’s RBD Dimer with two, FBRI EpiVacCorona and Sinopharm (Wuhan) with both two and Chumakov Center’s KoviVac with one.

Sinovac, Cansino and Zhifei and Sinopharm (Wuhan) are Chinese brands, while FBRI EpiVacCorona and Chumakov Center’s KoviVac are Russian brands.

Of the said vaccine brands, the Philippine FDA already issued EUA to five vaccine COVID-19 brands namely: Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Gamaleya, Bharat BioTech’s Covaxin and Janssen.

Only 3,025,600 doses of Sinovac and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines in total, however, have been delivered to the Philippines so far.

Domingo also revealed that the Philippine FDA was the second most generous in terms of granting EUA to COVID-19 vaccine brands with six, second only to Hungary which issued EUAs to eight COVID-19 vaccine brands.

The Department of Health has announced on Monday that it will resume administration of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in the country after a brief halt due to very rare blood clot incidents reported among those who got the AstraZeneca jab in Europe.

The DOH has said that the benefits of using AstraZeneca outweighs the risk at this point, pending conclusive findings if the vaccine indeed caused the blood clot.

The Philippines has 141,375 COVID-19  active cases so far.

Of this number, 9,628 new cases were recorded on April 19 alone. — RSJ, GMA News