The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency gave regulatory approval to a vaccine developed by Valneva, bringing the number of jabs approved for use in the UK to six.
The Pfizer/BioNTech jab was the first in the UK to be approved for emergency use by the MHRA. According to the MHRA, the Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Janssen and Novavax vaccines are approved, but not currently available.
The Valneva product was approved by the UK's independent medicines regulator. Unlike the other approved Covid jabs, the Valneva vaccine is an inactivated whole-viruses vaccine, which means the live virus was grown in a laboratory, rendered unable toinfecting cells, then administered to people to initiate an immune response.
According to the MHRA, this approach is already being used for both flu and polio vaccines, and experts have previously suggested that Covid jabs based on the whole virus may result in a broader immune response than those that involve only the spikeProtein, and may work better against new variant.
The vaccine could be as effective as the Oxford jab, according to results released by Valneva. It is stable when stored in a standard refrigerator, which could make it easier to distribute than other Covid jabs.
The commission and its Covid-19 expert working group carefully considered the evidence and advised that the benefit-risk balance was positive.
Prof Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and the chief investigator on the Valneva clinical development programme, said that while the jab had been approved it was unlikely to be available in the UK soon.
He said that the jab could prove to be more acceptable to some people.
Finn, a professor of paediatrics at Bristol University, said that no one has yet been offered any choice as to which vaccine they receive.
The number of deaths in England and Wales caused by coronaviruses has continued to increase, but levels are still below those reached during previous Covid waves.
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