Oxford-AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine is shockingly cheap

The AstraZeneca logo.
(Image credit: Justin Talliis/AFP via Getty Images)

An interim trial analysis for Oxford-AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine found the candidate's average efficacy to be 70 percent. While considered encouraging, it falls short of the rates shown by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, whose vaccines appear to be more than 90 percent effective.

Still, the Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate has a few key advantages — it can be stored at regular refrigerators temperatures for a long period of time, and it's much cheaper than the other candidates, which means it could be particularly crucial for developing nations and rural communities around the world.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.