AstraZeneca is withdrawing its Oxford-collaborated Covid-19 vaccine from global markets, the UK-based pharma company confirmed in a statement to Endpoints News on Tuesday.
The spokesperson said AstraZeneca no longer manufactures or supplies the vaccine, which was first cleared for emergency supply in the UK in December 2020 and had since been delivered to more than 180 countries.
“As multiple, variant Covid-19 vaccines have since been developed, there is a surplus of available updated vaccines,” the AstraZeneca spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “This has led to a decline in demand for Vaxzevria, which is no longer being manufactured or supplied. We will partner with regulatory authorities globally to initiate marketing authorization withdrawals for Vaxzevria, where no future commercial demand for the vaccine is expected.”
A document on the European Medicines Agency website says Vaxzevria is no longer authorized after AstraZeneca voluntarily withdrew the European Union marketing authorization. It was never approved in the US.
More than three billion doses of Vaxzevria had been supplied, an AstraZeneca spokesperson said. The two-dose vaccine was also used as a follow-up booster.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine ran into hurdles along the way, with legal proceedings from the European Commission regarding an advance purchase agreement (it was later settled) and safety concerns over rare but serious side effects. Similar cases of those rare blood clots were also reported with Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine — which, like Vaxzevria, was delivered with an adenovirus vector — raising questions about the vaccine technology.
After a months-long delay reportedly due to requests for more data, AstraZeneca decided not to follow through with an FDA approval application in November 2022, well after millions of shots from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and J&J had been delivered.
Vaxzevria sales peaked at $3.98 billion in 2021 but revenues fell sharply as the pandemic turned endemic.
AstraZeneca’s pullback occurs as Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Novavax and others continue to update their Covid-19 vaccines for endemic seasons, as well as explore combinations with flu shots. The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, will meet on June 5 to “make recommendations on the strain(s) to be included in the 2024-2025” Covid-19 vaccines, the agency said on Tuesday. It was rescheduled from May 16.