UK Government Will Not Buy AstraZeneca’s Evusheld Because of Insufficient Data

The UK government has decided that it will not order AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 treatment Evusheld (tixagevimab and cilgavimab) because of insufficient data on the duration of protection it provides against Omicron and its subvariants.

But Evusheld will be submitted for a full appraisal by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) — a process that can take around 20 months. And government officials plan to meet with AstraZeneca to consider any new real-world data from other countries.

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved the drug in March for the prevention of COVID-19 in people who are unlikely to mount an immune response from vaccination or for whom vaccination was not recommended. But the drug has not been yet been rolled out in the UK.