FILE - Medical staff prepares an AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine during preparations at the vaccine center in Ebersberg near Munich, Germany, Monday, March 22, 2021. The pharma giant AstraZeneca has requested that its European authorization for its COVID vaccine be pulled, according to the EU medicines regulator on Wednesday, May 8, 2024.
The U.K.'s national coronavirus immunization program in 2021 heavily relied on AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which was largely developed by scientists at Oxford University with significant financial government support. But even Britain later resorted to buying the mRNA vaccines for its COVID booster vaccination programs and the AstraZeneca vaccine is now rarely used globally.