AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine, developed by scientists from the prestigious Oxford University, was meant to be a post-Brexit success story.
Not only was it supposed to be a shining example of British ingenuity which would banish the devastating Covid pandemic and sentence lockdowns to history, it was also meant to demonstrate the UK’s generosity in the global crisis, with the jab sold at cost, not for profit.
Ministers were so confident in its success that then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock privately labelled it the ‘new Mini’, a symbol of a revitalised Britain’s place as a world leader.
The pharmaceutical giant’s decision to forego massive profits, and instead deliver jabs for the cost of a cup of coffee, even prompted the World Health Organization to label it a ‘vaccine for the world’.
But in just a few short years, the vaccine has become a pariah, dragged through the courts by the families of those it has allegedly killed and maimed through a rare side effect missed in the original clinical trials.
One of those seeking compensation for injuries linked to the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is father-of-two and IT engineer Jamie Scott (right). His wife Kate (left) welcomed the news the company was voluntarily withdrawing its ‘marketing authorisation’ from the EU
If successful, it will be the British taxpayer that foots the bill, which lawyers have estimated could amount to upwards of £250million under a deal struck between the pharma giant and ministers in the darkest days of the Covid lockdown.
The deal was to shield jab makers from the risk of being sued for any extremely rare adverse side effects missed in clinical trials to ensure the vaccines could be rolled out in the UK as soon as possible.
AstraZeneca is now withdrawing the vaccine from markets completely.
Despite the resulting panic over the landmark decision, experts today insisted that, overall, AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine is a safe and effective jab which undoubtedly saved millions of lives in Britain and around the world.
In fact, Professor Paul Hunter, a world-renowned expert in infectious diseases from the University of East Anglia, said the AstraZeneca jab had made a ‘really valuable contribution to reducing the mortality and disease from Covid’.
‘Without the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine there would have been many more deaths from Covid,’ he said.
‘The mRNA vaccines (made by Pfizer and Moderna) could not have been available in sufficient amounts in the early months of 2021.’
In December 2020, as millions of Brits spent Christmas in lockdown, separated from their loved ones, a beacon of hope appeared.
Two Covid jabs had been granted for emergency use in the UK, the US-based Pfizer’s vaccine using new mRNA based technology, and Britain’s own AstraZeneca jab made using more traditional methods.
Although Pfizer was first out the gate, developed in just 9 months — as opposed to a decade, supply was hamstrung by global demand.
It also had to be kept at frozen temperatures making the rollout a logistical nightmare.
AstraZeneca’s used viral vector technology, modifying an existing and harmless virus to deliver a piece of the Covid pathogen.
Clinical trials showed this enabled people’s immune system to recognise and fight-off the virus, not only helping prevent serious illness and death but also paving a way out of the paralysing lockdown.
Both jabs were approved for ’emergency’ authorisation in late 2020 with the Government offering indemnity to ‘to secure access to vaccines with the expected benefits to public health and the economy alike much sooner than may have been the case otherwise,’ according to documents tabled in Parliament.
Mr Hancock hailed the jab as a ‘moment to celebrate British innovation’ and ‘light at the end of the tunnel just got brighter’.
‘This vaccine will be made available to some of the poorest regions of the world at a low cost, helping protect countless people from this awful disease,’ he stated at the time.
‘It is a tribute to the incredible scientists at Oxford University and AstraZeneca whose breakthrough will help to save lives around the world.
‘I want to thank every single person who has been part of this British success story.’
It came just weeks after Mr Hancock, who was later resigned after being caught kissing his aide in a breach of the Government’s social distancing rules, famously shed a tear on national television following the first rollout of the Pfizer jab.
Boris Johnson, prime minister at the time, also lauded the AstraZeneca vaccine as ‘a triumph for British science’.
Unlike the mRNA jabs, AstraZeneca’s jab could be stored in normal fridges.
This meant the jab could be rolled out much faster and, of critical importance in a global pandemic, in countries that didn’t have access to high-tech cold storage.
The development of both jabs was remarkable. Normally it takes years to develop a new vaccine, let alone be ready to roll it out on scale, yet this was accomplished in less than 12 months.
This was partly to do scientists developing technologies that would enable them to make a jab quickly in the event of a new pandemic, and the millions governments and companies were willing to spend on development and trials in 2020.
But a key part of how jabs were able to get from the lab to the production line so quickly was a little-known deal struck between ministers and pharma giants.
While the jabs had undergone clinical trials for both safety and efficacy there was an acknowledgment that rarer side effects could have been missed or miscalculated.
This could, in theory, have made the companies behind the jabs vulnerable to legal action.
To ensure the vaccines were made available as quickly as possible, ministers offered the firms indemnity against future action.
In practical terms, this meant if any unexpected and damaging side effects did occur it would be Government, and by extension the taxpayer, who would pick up the bill.
In a note tabled before Parliament in January 2021, Mr Hancock said: ‘Willingness to accept appropriate indemnities has helped to secure access to vaccines with the expected benefits to public health and the economy alike much sooner than may have been the case otherwise.’
He also said, specifically on the AstraZeneca jab: ‘I would like to stress that the data so far on this vaccine suggests that there will be no adverse reactions, and so no liability.’
After all, trails involving hundreds of volunteers, including in the UK, had shown impressive results and no major safety concerns.
Now Britain faces a potential bill of hundreds of millions as those damaged by the jab seek compensation for injuries or deaths suffered by themselves or their loved ones.
A specific side effect, missed in clinical trials simply because of how rare it was, is called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), or alternatively vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT).
Only officially spotted in March 2021, the complication causes people to suffer blood clots along with a low platelet count. Platelets typically help the blood to clot.
These clots can go on to cause death and disability. Some people suffered injuries to their brains whilst others have had to have limbs amputated.
The complication is exceedingly rare, given the millions of doses dished out during the roll-out. The risk is thought to be in the region of one in 50,000, though some estimates put it even lower.
Clotting cases were first spotted in the EU. Several nations on the continent went on to slow or even suspend their rollout of the jab.
It followed a war of words over the British-designed jab with European leaders like French president Emmanuel Macron, who sparked a diplomatic row by labelling it ‘quasi-effective’.
Britain eventually followed its European neighbours, first stopping the jabs being used for people under 30 and then weeks later under 40.
Experts based this on younger groups being at less risk of Covid, meaning the benefits of being jabbed weren’t worth the risk.
There is no evidence that mRNA jabs, like those made by Pfizer and Moderna, carry the same risk because they work on a different mechanism. However, they do have their own side effects, like any drug.
Experts today told MailOnline that the AstraZeneca jab should still be considered a success story.
The AstraZeneca jab was the most widely used in the UK during the initial rollout of the vaccination programme – before it was linked to a risk in blood clots
Dr Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, said: ‘The Oxford/AstraZeneca was an excellent vaccine, and a vital part of the UK and global pandemic response.
‘It went through the correct levels of testing and has saved a huge number of lives and reduced hospitalisations.’
He added the jabs relegation was less to do with safety concerns and more due to mRNA jabs being, essentially, a superior option.
Because of mRNA technology embedded in the Pfizer and Moderna jabs, they are still used as booster doses.
The mRNA jabs can be easily updated too, to target new Covid variants, hence why ministers have favoured them ahead of traditional tools.
‘Despite the success of the AstraZeneca jab during the height of the pandemic, the key reason for the withdrawal is likely to be that other Covid vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, are essentially better products,’ Dr Head said.
‘They have higher effectiveness, and the mRNA platforms are more easily adapted towards the latest Covid variants.’
Professor Hunter added: ‘If we didn’t have the mRNA vaccines, which are more effective and had fewer serious adverse reactions we would still be using the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine today.
‘The benefits would still have outweighed the harms.’
Professor Hunter added that it is unlikely the blood clot side effect could have spotted before the jab was deployed given the side effect’s rarity, saying it could ‘never be detected with certainty until millions of people have received the vaccine’.
Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Government’s vaccine advisory panel, at the University of Bristol, told the BBC the AstraZeneca was ‘was what lifted us out of the catastrophe that was unfolding at the time’ in combination with the Pfizer jab.
Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist from the University of Warwick, also credited the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine with saving ‘millions of lives’, adding its development was an example of the climate experts were working in at the time.
‘The pressures of the pandemic required a different approach, overlapping the traditional phases of vaccine development and manufacture without compromising safety and efficacy testing,’ he said.
He said such rapid development carried ‘significant financial risk to developers and manufacturers’.
Researchers believe the rare side effect occurs due to the modified cold virus lurking in the jab having an adverse effect on platelets in the blood, triggering clotting
‘There was no guarantee the Covid vaccine candidate would be safe and effective and manufacturing scale-up to commercial scale was undertaken before establishment of clinical proof of activity,’ he said.
Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, also said that the rapid development of the vaccine ‘undoubtedly saved lives’ in spite of the rare side effect.
But he added that doesn’t mean there aren’t potential lessons to be learned on if the dangers posed by the jab could have been spotted earlier.
‘The issue will always be whether there ought to have been a temporary suspension and adjusted guidance as soon as VITT cases were observed and if the shift to alternates, which happened anyway, should have happened sooner,’ he said.
Professor Jones added that while national pride could have played a role in the UK’s speed of deploying the Covid vaccine, VITT was so rare there was almost no chance of spotting it in clinical trials.
‘The nationalism was not helpful, it’s science, not a gladiator contest, but the truth is that the VITT incidence rate was such that it could not have been detected in the clinical trials, given their scale,’ he said.
‘It was only on mass roll-out that the cases were noted.’
He added that one of the lasting impacts of the AstraZeneca saga could be relegation of viral vector vaccines.
‘My personal view is that the case for ‘vectored’ vaccines has been weakened by the history of events,’ Professor Jones added.
‘I doubt we will see (one like AstraZeneca’s) used ever again at the same scale and in the same way.’
AstraZeneca wasn’t the only company to use a viral vector vaccine.
American pharmaceutical titan Johnson & Johnson also used the technology to develop their own single-dose Covid jab.
Similar to AstraZeneca, that jab was also linked to rare cases of blood clots and is no longer commercially available.
AstraZeneca jab also made history in another way, for its decision to forego massive profits and deliver the vaccine for just £3.60 the minimum needed to cover costs of its production.
The decision, naturally unusual for multinational business, was lauded at the time.
It wasn’t to last. In November 2021 the company said it would start charging more for its Covid vaccine in reflection that the dangers posed by pandemic were fading.
The company didn’t specify the new price but said the rise would be less than 20 per cent off the previous cost.
AstraZeneca also committed to continue to charge poorer nations the lower at-cost price.
