Corona current: Novavax presents vaccine

Effectiveness of 89.3 percent
Corona aktuell: Novavax presents new vaccine

by Stephanie Pingel

January 29, 2021, 4:49 pm

While the number of vaccinations against the coronavirus is slowly picking up – albeit slowly – more and more pharmaceutical companies are celebrating successes with newly developed vaccines against COVID-19. The US company Novavax has now also been able to use a study to prove that its new vaccine can help in the fight against the coronavirus: 15,000 people took part in the study in Great Britain – and the vaccine has an effectiveness of 89.3 percent.

Only six cases of disease in vaccinated subjects

Novavax divided people between 18 and 84 into two groups for the study. About half of the subjects received the new vaccine, the other half an ineffective placebo. The result: a total of 62 study participants contracted COVID-19, 56 of them were in the placebo group. Only six of those infected came from the group that had received the vaccine. Since a good quarter of the test subjects are older than 65 years, one can assume that older people are protected just as well as younger people.

According to the company, the study should form the basis for to initiate a fast approval process for the new vaccine in the EU, Great Britain and other countries. In addition, the investigation will be continued in order to statistically confirm the previous result.

Does the vaccine also help against mutations?

So far, it is questionable whether the previously developed vaccines can protect against the newly discovered mutation of the coronavirus, which was discovered in the UK. Novavax therefore tested in the so-called phase III study whether the agent developed by the company also works against the mutation. The result: In fact, an initial analysis found the vaccine to be 85.6 percent effective, almost as high as with the normal virus variant.

However, the vaccine did not do so well against another mutation that first appeared in South Africa: According to studies, the effectiveness rate here was only around 49 percent. However, it is pointed out that among the test persons there were some HIV-infected people in whom the agent was less effective. In other study participants, an effectiveness of about 60 percent was found.

New vaccines against mutation are in the works

Novavax announced that the company has been working on new versions of his vaccine since the beginning of January, which should also protect against possible new variants of the coronavirus. It is expected that the first clinical studies will begin in the second quarter of this year.