© 2024 Texas Public Radio
Real. Reliable. Texas Public Radio.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine Designer On Struggles With Variants, Stigma

A medic prepares to administer a dose of an AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. (Kyiv's City Hall Press Office via AP)
A medic prepares to administer a dose of an AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. (Kyiv's City Hall Press Office via AP)

The Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine will be at the forefront of international vaccination efforts, due to its high production capacity and less-strict cold storage needs.

But the vaccine has faced setbacks: In Europe, many see it as “second-class” compared to Pfizer-BioNTech’s, and the South African virus variant has been shown to drastically reduce the vaccine’s effectiveness.

Host Jane Clayson speaks with professor Sarah Gilbert, who led one of the two research teams that developed the AstraZeneca vaccine, about the next steps.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags