UK's Boris Johnson hopes for immediate approval of COVID-19 vaccines by the regulator

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday, November 30 expressed hope that two promising coronavirus vaccine candidates would be soon approved by the regulator. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is yet to give its nod to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca co-labs.

"We're obviously hoping that both the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will get approved in the course of the next few days and weeks," Boris told reporters during a trip to a medical facility.

When asked if the vaccines would get a go-ahead before Christmas, the prime minister replied by saying 'That's the hope'.
He further stressed that his government could not let the optimist 'run away with us'. However, he said that there was every reason to believe that a working vaccine could turn the tide in the struggle against the virus. 

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UK witnessed 30% decline in COVID-19 infections

According to a study of more than 100,000 volunteers conducted by Imperial College London and Ipsos MORI proved that the month-long lockdown has helped in preventing the spread of novel coronavirus by 30 percent. This means that the infection rate has come down to  96 people per 10,000 infected between November 13 and 24. As per the last observation, the record was 130 infections per 10,000 people. 

“During the period 13 November to 24 November, SARS-CoV-2 virus was circulating with significantly lower prevalence than between 26 October to 2 November and infections had decreased substantially with 96 in 10,000 infected”, read the conclusion of the report. According to the report, swabs were analysed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The reports say that over 12 days of testing, out of 105,123 swab results, 821 were positive. 

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After the lockdown in England ends on December 2, a ‘tougher’ three-tiered system is expected to be imposed. While some measures are expected to stay the same, there will be more areas that can be placed in higher tiers to prevent the virus from spreading. The 10 pm curfew on bars and restaurants is expected to be altered. 

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(With ANI inputs)