# WHO and Australian approvals lift hopes for AstraZeneca vaccine

The vaccine developed jointly by drug company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford is being approved by a rising number of regulators, paving the way for its generalized use, notably in the developing world.

• The Australian medicine regulator gave provisional approval for the AstraZeneca–Oxford COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, ahead of a national vaccination campaign due to start next week.

• The Canberra government said it had ordered enough doses of the vaccine, to be manufactured in Australia, to cover the country’s entire population.

• The World Health Organization on Monday approved the vaccine for emergency use, which should allow developing countries a wide access to the shot. 

• AstraZeneca
  AZN,
  +0.18%
  has pledged not to profit from sales of the vaccine, which is sold at the cheapest price of available vaccine — at €1.80 ($2.20) a dose, for example, in the European Union, according to the Belgian health minister, compared with €18 a dose for the Moderna
  MRNA,
  -2.84%
  vaccine and €12 for the Pfizer
  PFE,
  -0.09%
  –BioNTech
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  -2.71%
  one.

• The U.K.-Swedish group’s chief executive Pascal Soriot received the same 3% salary rise as the company’s staff for this year, taking his base pay to £1.33 million ($1.9 million), the Financial Times wrote. But his bonus and a long-term incentive program could take his pay package to more than £15 million.
• Even after French President Emmanuel Macron publicly raised doubts about the AstraZeneca shot in a media interview, his own health minister Olivier Véran was pictured taking it, in an attempt to reassure French public opinion about its efficacy and safety.

 The outlook: AstraZeneca sees doubts about its vaccine’s efficacy in the 65-plus age group slowly dissipating, and its low price, together with ease of transport, storage and manipulation, could over time make it one of the most used worldwide.