Britain on Wednesday became the first country to authorize an easy-to-handle COVID-19 vaccine whose developers hope it will become the "vaccine for the world." The approval and a shift in policy that will speed up rollout of the vaccine in the UK comes as a surge in infections threatens to swamp British hospitals.
The Department of Health said it had accepted a recommendation from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to authorize emergency use of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and UK-based drugmaker AstraZeneca.
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"The rollout will start on Jan. 4 and will really accelerate into the first few weeks of next year," British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told told Sky News. Britain has bought 100 million doses of the vaccine.
Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK have already received a different vaccine, made by US drugmaker Pfizer and German firm BioNTech.
