The shares in Novavax Inc. jumped more than 20% on Thursday after the company found that the results of studies show that the proposed COVID-19 vaccine is generally almost 90% effective, but much less effective against a new variant.
In a Phase 3 trial in the UK, the Novavax NVAX,
vaccine has shown overall efficacy but less protection against new variants. Novavax has announced that the vaccine was originally 95.6% effective against the most common form of COVID-19 and 85.6% effective against the new strain originally identified in the UK.
A Phase 2b trial in South Africa showed that the vaccine was slightly less than 50% effective compared to a new variant originally identified in that country. After the effectiveness of 49.4% compared to the new variant in the trial led to an overall number of 60%, Novavax said that it would start developing a new vaccine specifically aimed at the variant, which will be available on Thursday for the first found in the US.
“A primary advantage of our complementary platform is that it uses a very small amount of antigen, enabling the rapid creation and large-scale production of combination vaccine candidates, which could potentially address several circulating strains of COVID-19,” Novavax said. President of Research and Development Gregory Glenn said in Thursday’s announcement. “Combined with the safety profile observed so far in our studies with our COVID-19 vaccine, as well as previous flu studies, we are optimistic about our ability to adapt quickly to evolving conditions.”
Shares originally plunged more than 10% in after-hours trading after the news was announced, but soon turned around and rose more than 20%. The stock rose 2.2% in ordinary trading on Thursday, rising more than 1,700% in the past year from the S&P 500 index SPX,
increased by 14.5%.
Novavax is still conducting additional studies in the US and Mexico. Managers plan to discuss the results further during a conference on Thursday at 16:30 in Eastern.