Priyanka Tanwer

The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca has announced that one billion doses of the Oxford vaccine have been released to over 170 countries to beat the COVID-19 virus across the world.

“AstraZeneca, with their extensive world-wide development and manufacturing capabilities, have been able to have the vaccine approved and licenced for use in over 170 countries, with over 20 manufacturing sites across the world, including the Serum Institute of India, working together to release the one billion doses worldwide,” University said in a statement.

It said that as the manufacturing vaccines is complex, we are working together with AstraZeneca to ensure that significant technology transfer happens between the global manufacturing sites and their supply chains.

Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, said: ‘On behalf of my colleagues across Oxford I would like to offer my warmest congratulations to AstraZeneca for the extraordinary accomplishment of releasing one billion doses of our life saving vaccine. By distributing this vaccine at cost, they have made an admirable and exemplary contribution to global health. We are delighted to be in partnership with them.”

Dame Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology, and co-developer of the vaccine, said, “We started to create this vaccine in January 2020 without knowing if it would ever be needed. To have reached one billion doses released only 18 months later is a phenomenal achievement on the part of AstraZeneca, who have co-ordinated manufacturing at multiple sites around the world to reach this milestone.”

She said that it was made possible by many years of research at Oxford University in the production of the vaccine platform technology, developing a manufacturing process and conducting clinical trials with other ChAdOx1-vectored vaccines.