Novavax Inc. said on Thursday that his COVID-19 vaccine appears 89% effective based on early findings from a UK study, and that it also appears to work – though not as well – against new mutated versions of the virus circulating in that country and South America. Africa. .
The announcement comes out of concerns about whether a variety of vaccines being rolled out around the world will be strong enough to protect against worrying new variants. – and because the world urgently needs new types of shots to boost scarce supplies.
The survey of 15,000 people in Great Britain is still ongoing. But an interim analysis found that so far 62 participants have been diagnosed with COVID-19 – only six of them in the group who received a vaccine and the rest who received fake injections.
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 trial participants who became infected had the mutated version. The numbers are very small, but Novavax said they suggest the vaccine is nearly 96% effective against the older coronavirus and nearly 86% against the new variant. The findings are based on cases that occurred at least one week after the second dose.
“Both figures are dramatic demonstrations of our vaccine’s ability to develop a very powerful immune response,” said Stanley Erck, CEO of Novavax, in an appeal with investors late Thursday.
Scientists are even more concerned about a variant first discovered in South Africa that contains several mutations. Results from a smaller Novavax study in that country suggest that the vaccine works, but not nearly as well as against the UK variant.
The South African study included some volunteers with HIV. The vaccine appears to be 60% effective among HIV-negative volunteers. Including volunteers with HIV, overall protection was 49%, the company said. While genetic testing is still ongoing, so far about 90% of the COVID-19 diseases found in the South African study have been found to be due to the new mutant.
“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, which now causes more than 90% of new cases in that country, “we are still seeing the vaccine’s efficacy,” she said.
More worrying is what the study showed about a totally different question – the likelihood of people getting COVID-19 a second time, said the leader of the South African study, Shabir Madhi of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Tests suggested that nearly a third of the study participants were previously infected, but the rate of new infections in the placebo group was similar.
“Previous infection with early variants of the virus in South Africa does not protect” against infection with the new one, he said. “No protection seems to have been diverted.”
Novavax said it will need some additional data before it can request UK consent to use the vaccine sometime in the next month or so. A larger study in the US and Mexico enrolled just over half of the required 30,000 volunteers. Novavax said it’s not clear whether the Food and Drug Administration will also need data from that study before deciding whether to allow its use by the U.S.
Meanwhile, it is beginning to develop a version of the vaccine that could more specifically target the mutations found in South Africa, in case health authorities finally decide an updated dosage is needed.
Vaccines against COVID-19 train the body to recognize the new coronavirus, usually the spike protein that envelops it. But the Novavax candidate is made different from the first shots used. The Maryland company, which is called a recombinant protein vaccine, uses genetic engineering to grow harmless copies of the coronavirus spike protein in insect cells. Scientists extract and purify the protein, then mix it with an immune-boosting chemical.
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AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione contributed.
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The Associated Press’s Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Education Department. The AP is solely responsible for all content.