Novavax, a little-known company backed by the US federal government’s Operation Warp Speed, said on Thursday for the first time that its Covid-19 vaccine offers robust protection against the virus. But it also found that the vaccine is not as effective against the rapidly spreading variant first discovered in South Africa, another setback in the global race to end a pandemic that has already exceeded 2.1 million people.
The news was problematic for the United States, which reported hours earlier on the first known cases of the infectious variant in two unrelated people in South Carolina. And that comes just days after Moderna and Pfizer said their vaccines are also less effective against the same variant.
Novavax, which this summer made one of the six vaccine candidates supported by Operation Warp Speed, has conducted trials in Britain, South Africa, the United States and Mexico. It said on Thursday that an early analysis of the 15,000-person trial in Britain revealed that the two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of almost 90 percent there. But in a small experiment in South Africa, the efficiency dropped to just under 50 percent. Almost all of the cases that scientists have analyzed there so far have been caused by the variant known as B.1.351. The data also showed that many participants in the trial were infected with the variant, even after they already had Covid.
“We have the first trial – we are the first to do an efficiency test – in the face of a changing virus,” said Stanley Erck, president and CEO of Novavax. He said researchers expected the variant to change the test results, but “the amount of change was a bit surprising to everyone.”
The South African trial was relatively small – with only 4400 volunteers – and was not designed to make an exact estimate of how much protection the vaccine offers. Nevertheless, the results were striking enough that the company would soon start testing a new vaccine adapted to protect against the variant from South Africa. “You will have to make new vaccines,” he said. Erck said.
While the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines rely on a newer mRNA technology not used in previous vaccinations, Novavax’s candidate uses an older, more established method that relies on the injection of coronavirus proteins to elicit an immune response. cause.
The fact that three vaccines apparently show reduced efficacy compared to the variant from South Africa is not encouraging, and the results that Novavax announced on Thursday were the first to take place outside a laboratory, and tested how good a vaccine is. works in people infected with a new variant. Johnson & Johnson is also about to announce the results of its Covid-19 vaccine trials, and has also tested its candidate in South Africa.
The announcement of Novavax raises Johnson & Johnson. The company was expected to announce its results as early as last weekend, and the delay led to speculation among scientists that the firm had also discovered that its vaccine worked less well in South African trial volunteers infected with the variant. In a earnings call Tuesday, the company’s chief executive Alex Gorsky said they were looking forward to sharing results from their late trial early next week.
The rise of several highly contagious variants has complicated efforts to bring the pandemic under control, leading to world leaders stopping travel to places such as Britain and South Africa, even though the variants seem to have surrounded the world. . In the United States, researchers have warned that the variant first identified in Britain, which is believed to be more contagious, could become the dominant form of the virus in this country by March.
The United States lags far behind other countries in testing such variants, and the country from South Africa has been found in about 30 countries.
But experts have also said there are reasons for optimism, noting that the vaccines remain effective. The best way to combat infectious new variants is to continue vaccination and other public health measures, which will slow down the virus’ ability to infect and further mutate new people. Medicine manufacturers can update their vaccines and offer regular shots, similar to the flu vaccine.
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Answers to your vaccine questions
At present, more than 150 million people can be vaccinated – almost half of the population. But each state makes the final decision about who goes first. The country’s 21 million health workers and three million residents of long-term care facilities were the first to qualify. In mid-January, federal officials urged all states to be eligible for anyone 65 and older and for adults of any age with medical conditions at high risk of becoming seriously ill or dying of Covid-19 . Adults in the general population are at the back of the queue. If federal and state health officials can clear up bottlenecks in the distribution of vaccines, everyone 16 years and older will be eligible as early as spring or early summer. The vaccine has not been approved in children, although studies are underway. It can take months before a vaccine is available to anyone under the age of 16. Visit your health website for recent information on vaccination policies in your area.
You do not have to pay anything out of pocket to get the vaccine, although you will be asked for insurance information. If you do not have insurance, you should still receive the vaccine free of charge. Congress passed this spring legislation preventing insurers from applying any cost sharing, such as a co-payment or deductible. It was based on additional protection that pharmacies, doctors and hospitals prevented from patients, including those who were uninsured. Nevertheless, health experts are concerned that patients could end up in loopholes that make them vulnerable to surprising bills. This can happen to those who charge a doctor’s fee along with their vaccine, or Americans who have certain types of health coverage that do not fall under the new rules. If you get your vaccine at a doctor’s office or an urgent clinic, talk to them about possible hidden charges. To make sure you do not get a surprise bill, this is the best way to get your vaccine at a vaccination center or local pharmacy once the shots are more available.
It must be determined. It is possible that Covid-19 vaccinations will become an annual event, just like the flu shot. Or it could be that the benefits of the vaccine last longer than a year. We have to wait and see how durable the protection against the vaccines is. To determine this, researchers will be monitoring people who have been vaccinated to look for “breakthrough cases” – people who become ill despite being vaccinated with Covid-19. This is a sign of weakening of protection and will give researchers clues as to how long the vaccine will last. They will also monitor the levels of antibodies and T cells in the blood of vaccines to determine if and when a booster shot is needed. It is possible that people need boosters every few months, once a year or only every few years. It’s just a matter of waiting for the data.
Novavax’s trial in the UK tested how many volunteers developed symptoms of Covid-19 one week after receiving a second dose. The company said Thursday that its initial analysis shows that out of 62 participants who developed the disease, 56 received a placebo and 6 received the vaccine. The newer, more contagious variant first identified in Britain was found to have caused around 50 per cent of cases in the trial, Novavax said.
If the results were to turn out in the larger clinical trial in the United States and Mexico, which enrolled about 16,000 out of a target of 30,000 people, it would put the vaccine on the same level as the Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech vaccines, which has been shown to be about 95 percent effective.
But the news in South Africa was not so encouraging. Novavax’s smaller trial found that the vaccine had an efficacy of 49.4 percent. (The company reported that about 6 percent of the participants in the trial were positive for HIV, and for those who were not HIV-positive, the vaccine had an effectiveness of 60 percent.) The company said the trial begins has to record cases of Covid-19 from September to mid-month, when the more contagious variant was widespread. According to Novavax, 44 participants in the trial developed Covid-19, which followed the genetic lineage of 27 cases. Of these, 25 cases were caused by the more contagious version of the virus.
The company also said that about one third of the participants in the trial in South Africa had previously developed Covid-19 after being infected by the original form of the virus, and that their results showed that the previous infections did not new variant does not protect. The company said the vaccine did provide some protection for those who had previously contracted the disease, but did not include the group in its analysis.
Novavax began work on a new version of the vaccine this month to address more contagious variants, which can either serve as a lap shot or be given at the same time as their original vaccine.
The B.1.351 variant first came to the attention of scientists in December. It contains a number of mutations, including some that alter the shape of the surface of the virus and impair the effectiveness of vaccines.
Looking back at older samples, South African scientists have found the first evidence of B.1.351 dating back to October. But by December, it had spread through the country and in many regions became the dominant genus of the coronavirus.
That alone would make B.1.351 a worrying development. In Britain, researchers found another rapidly spreading variant, known as B.1.1.7. In Brazil and California, other scientists have found variants that may be more contagious than previous forms of the coronavirus.