Novavax Inc. said on Thursday that the COVID-19 vaccine looks 89% effective based on previous findings from a UK study and that it also seems to work – though not as well – against new mutated versions of the virus found in that country and South Africa circulates. .
The announcement comes amid concerns over whether a range of vaccines will be expanded around the world to strongly protect against worrying new variants. – and as the world urgently needs new types of shots to advance scarce supplies.
The study of 15,000 people in Britain is still ongoing. But an interim analysis found that 62 participants have so far been diagnosed with COVID-19 – only six of them in the group who were vaccinated, and the rest who received a shot.
The infections occurred at a time when Britain was experiencing a jump in COVID-19, caused by a more contagious variant. A preliminary analysis found that more than half of the participants in the trial who became infected had the mutated version. The numbers are very small, but Novavax said they suggest the vaccine is almost 96% effective against the older coronavirus and almost 86% effective against the new variant. The findings are based on cases that occurred at least one week after the second dose.
“Both of these numbers are dramatic demonstrations of our vaccine’s ability to develop a very powerful immune response,” Novavax CEO Stanley Erck said in a call with investors late Thursday.
Scientists were even more concerned about a variant that was first discovered in South Africa and that has different mutations. Results from a smaller Novavax study in the country suggest that the vaccine does work, but not nearly as well as against the variant from Britain.
The South African study included some volunteers with HIV. Among HIV-negative volunteers, the vaccine appears to be 60% effective. Including volunteers with HIV, the overall protection was 49%, the company said. While genetic testing is still ongoing, about 90% of the COVID-19 diseases found in the South African study due to the new mutant appear so far.
“These are good results. There is reason to be optimistic about the 60% effectiveness, said Glenda Gray, head of the South African Medical Research Council. Even against the new variant that now causes more than 90% of new cases in the country, ‘we still see the effectiveness of the vaccine’, she said.
More concerned is what the study shows about a very different question – the chance that people will get COVID-19 a second time, says the leader of the South African study, Shabir Madhi from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Tests suggested that nearly a third of study participants were previously infected, but the number of new infections in the placebo group was similar.
“Infection in the past with early variants of the virus in South Africa does not protect” against infection with the new, he said. “There seems to be no protection.”
Novavax said it needed additional data before it could apply for UK vaccine authorization, sometime next month. A larger study in the U.S. and Mexico enrolled just over half of the required 30,000 volunteers. Novavax said it was not clear whether the Food and Drug Administration also needed data from the study before deciding to allow US use.
Meanwhile, it is starting to develop a version of the vaccine that could focus more specifically on the mutations in South Africa, in case health authorities eventually decide that updated dose is needed.
Vaccinations against COVID-19 train the body to recognize the new coronavirus, mostly the peak protein that covers it. But the Novavax candidate is made different from the first shots used. The company Maryland is called a recombinant protein vaccine and uses genetic engineering to grow harmless copies of the coronavirus ear protein in insect cells. Scientists extract and purify the protein and then mix in an immune-boosting chemical.
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AP Medical author Marilynn Marchione contributed.
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