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A corona vaccine candidate from the US pharmaceutical company Novavax apparently protects 89 percent from Covid-19.

This emerges from a preliminary analysis of the third and final test phase for the preparation, as the company announced on Thursday.

According to the British study, the agent also works against virus variants that have emerged for the first time in Great Britain and South Africa - albeit to different degrees.

The test run with 15,000 subjects in the UK is still ongoing.

The preliminary analysis showed that 62 participants had been diagnosed with Covid-19 so far.

Most of them had previously received an ineffective placebo.

Six people belonged to the group who received the vaccine.

These subjects were infected in a phase in which the United Kingdom recorded a massive increase in corona cases, which is attributed to the particularly contagious mutant B.1.1.7.

More than half of the study participants had the variant, as a preliminary study showed.

According to Novavax, the numbers suggest that the experimental vaccine is nearly 96 percent effective against the prevailing coronavirus and nearly 86 percent against the mutant.

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Both values ​​are "dramatic demonstrations" of the ability of the vaccine to develop a "very effective" immune response, Novavax boss Stanley Erck said on Thursday evening in a phone call with investors.

Researchers are even more concerned about the virus variant B.1.351, which was discovered in South Africa and has various mutations.

The first results of a Novavax study on a smaller scale suggest that the vaccine does not work nearly as well against this variant as against those from Great Britain.

Limited effectiveness in HIV patients

Some subjects with HIV took part in the South African study.

In HIV-negative volunteers, the vaccine appeared to be 60 percent effective.

If you included the immunocompromised participants, the general protection rate was 49 percent, as Novavax announced.

Genetic tests are still ongoing, but around 90 percent of the Covid 19 diseases identified in the South African study seem to be due to the new mutant.

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“These are good results.

There is reason to be optimistic, ”said Glenda Gray, director of the South African Medical Research Council.

Even with the new variant, "vaccine effectiveness" can still be determined.

Novavax is expected to seek approval of the vaccine in the UK in February.

A more comprehensive study is currently ongoing in the USA and Mexico.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was pleased with the results of the Novavax tests.

The British regulators would now examine the agent.

If approved, the British government will order 60 million vaccine doses.

The EU is also considering its supply by Novavax.

So far, the corona vaccines from the Mainz company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer and the US company Moderna have been approved in the European Union.

This Friday, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will decide on a recommendation for approval for the vaccine from the British-Swedish company Astrazeneca.

Both Astrazeneca's and Novavax's products have the advantage that they do not have to be stored at temperatures as low as the other previous vaccines.

However, there does not appear to be enough data on the effectiveness of the Astrazeneca vaccine in the elderly.

Therefore, if it is approved in Germany, it will probably only be administered to people under 65 years of age.