AstraZeneca still hasn't filed for the EUA in the US despite reaching their US trial endpoints. I wonder if they are just never going to submit to the FDA. With the Admin's move today to give 60 million of the supply abroad, maybe that will push AstraZeneca to not bother with the filing.
All in all, while I would have liked to see this vaccine approved in the US after the UK trial data, it looks like the cost of not having this vaccine in the US is going to be fairly minimal.
There have been significant manufacturing setbacks with AstraZeneca's US production such that they are far behind their manufacturing targets. Right now we only have about 10 million doses that can be used. 20 million more doses that should be ready in the coming weeks. As a result, the lack of an EUA filing did not significantly change the course of the US vaccine rollout as some were arguing.
It is a good lesson that vaccine manufacturing is/was the main hurdle in this process and the clinical trials/regulatory environment were mostly second order hurdles.
The silver lining in all this is likely that developing countries that desperately need vaccines will get them a lot sooner than before.