AstraZeneca withdraws its vaccine application in Switzerland

AstraZeneca has withdrawn its application for approval of its Covid vaccine in Switzerland, while the Swiss Institute for Therapeutic Products intended to restrict the serum to people over the age of 50.

  

The Swedish-British company had filed its application in October 2020 with the therapeutic products authority Swissmedic. Since then, it has been in close contact with the authorities and continuously provided the results of the required studies, Swissmedic said Thursday.

 

The latter had repeatedly indicated that the data were not sufficient for an authorization. The Confederation had initially ordered 5.3 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine. However, in view of the lack of authorization, it decided at the end of June to make four million doses available to the Covax international vaccination assistance program.

 In October, Switzerland delivered 440,000 doses to five third countries. In the meantime, Switzerland has approved for a limited period the two RNA-messenger vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, as well as the viral vector vaccine from Janssen. With the withdrawal of AstraZeneca's application, there are no longer any pending applications for Covid-19 vaccines in Switzerland.