Two Covid-19 vaccine projects, one British and one Chinese, have produced an important immune response and demonstrated their safety for patients, according to the results of two separate clinical trials published in the British medical journal The Lancet on Monday .
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Efficiency to be demonstrated in a third phase
The first, developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with the pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca, generated "a strong immune response" in a trial on more than 1,000 patients. The second project, which researchers from Wuhan in China are working on, funded by CanSino Biologics, provoked a strong reaction in terms of antibodies in another trial among most of the approximately 500 participants.
These clinical trials are still in a preliminary phase (phase 1/2 and phase 2), and their effectiveness will have to be established in a phase 3 trial, on a larger number of participants, before considering their commercialization on a large scale.
No serious side effects
However, these results were eagerly awaited: many researchers and laboratories around the world are racing against the clock to find a safe and effective vaccine against Covid-19. "If our vaccine works, it is a promising option because it can be easily produced on a large scale," said Sarah Gilbert, a researcher at Oxford University.
The Oxford and CanSino vaccines are based on a modified adenovirus, which does not replicate, which makes them safer, especially for fragile patients. Neither trial recorded any serious adverse events. The most common side effects were fever, fatigue and pain at the injection site.