Getting down to the wire …
And that’s just the average efficacy for the latest COVID-19 candidate to ready itself for an emergency-use authorization. According to a report from Novavax, their UK Phase 3 trials demonstrate a very robust response against the original forms of the virus (95.6%) and the UK variant (85.6%). The news on the response to the South Africa variant isn’t nearly as good, however: Biotech firm Novavax said Thursday that its coronavirus vaccine was more than 89% effective in protecting against Covid-19 in its phase three clinical trial conducted in the United Kingdom. The results were based on 62 confirmed Covid-19 infections among the trial’s 15,000 participants. The company said 56 cases were observed in the placebo group versus six cases observed in the group that received its vaccine. That resulted in an estimated vaccine efficacy of 89.3%, it said.… The study also found that the vaccine appeared to be 85.6% effective against the U.K. variant, also known as B.1.1.7. A separate phase two study in South Africa showed that the vaccine isn’t nearly as effective against a new strain ravaging that country. The shot was still considered effective in protecting against the virus, but at an efficacy rate of just 49.4% among 44 Covid-19 cases in South Africa, where 90% of the cases contain the troubling new variant, the company said.
