The United Kingdom has started an accelerated review for AstraZeneca's potential coronavirus vaccine. The vaccine is being co-developed with the University of Oxford.
Britain's health regulator is doing what's called a "rolling review," meant to speed up the approval process. Regulators will look at clinical data in real time while talking to AstraZeneca about manufacturing.
Bloomberg reports the U.K. also recently started an expedited review process for another potential vaccine ... this one from Pfizer. Other top contenders are Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.
Until the Brexit transition is complete later this year, the country is still subject to the European Medicines Agency for approval. The British government said that if it doesn't get approval fast enough from the EMA, it may look into getting temporary approval to authorize the vaccine anyway.
The U.K. now has more than one million cases of coronavirus.
