Novavax said that its vaccine appears nearly 90 percent effective against COVID based on initial clinical trials from a British study and that it also seems to offer protection against some variants of the virus, the company has announced.
The United Kingdom has secured 60 million doses of the Novavax vaccine, which will be produced in Stockton-on-Tees in northeast England.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson welcomed the "good news," with doses of the vaccine expected to be delivered around June this year if granted approval by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), officials said.
Novavax released interim results from two trials of its experimental treatment, one in the UK and another in South Africa. A third test in the U.S. has enrolled around 13,000 out of 30,000 planned subjects and will not release results for several more months.
The announcement by the Maryland-based biotechnology company comes in the face of concerns about whether a variety of vaccines being distributed globally will be effective enough to protect against the new strains – and as more countries desperately needs new types of vaccines to address dwindling supplies.
Novavax said that its candidate vaccine – which is given in two doses – was 95.7% effective against the original COVID variant and 85.7% effective against the one first detected in Europe, known as B.1.1.7, based on the outcome from its third-phase tests carried out in Britain. This provided average effectiveness of 89.3%.
The study made in South Africa included some participants with HIV. Among the HIV-negative patients, the Novavax vaccine appears 60 percent effective. Including those with HIV, the protection was almost 50 percent, the company said.
The UK has so far granted emergency use authority (EUA) to three COVID vaccines – one from Oxford University and AstraZeneca, another by Pfizer/BioNTech, and a third from pharmaceutical group Moderna.
Final data are expected to be released in a few weeks, Stanley Erck, Novavax president and chief executive officer, said in a Thursday media briefing.
"These are impressive results, and we're very pleased to have helped Novavax with the development of this vaccine," Clive Dix, chair of the British Vaccine Taskforce, said in a statement.
Professor Paul Heath, the chief investigator of the British Novavax clinical test, said the outcome was very important, particularly in relation to the effectiveness against the UK variant.
The results held positive implications for vaccine development as new strains transpire, adding there was "a lot of light now at the end of the tunnel," Heath said in remarks quoted by CNN.
