Novavax Shot 96% Effective Against Covid In Final Study

Washington, 13 March 2021:

US-based Novavax on Friday announced a final efficacy figure of 96.4% for its vaccine against the original strain of the novel coronavirus, with an efficacy as high as 83.4% two weeks after the first shot itself, boosting the global fight against covid-19.

The two-shot protein subunit vaccine now has the highest efficacy among all covid vaccines, beating vaccines from Pfizer (95%) and Moderna (94.1%). Interestingly, its first shot alone has a higher efficacy than Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine, which had 72% efficacy in the US and 66% overall efficacy in global trials that also included South Africa, where a mutant strain is dominant.

The announcement of Novavax’s efficacy is significant in the fight against covid for India, where the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, Serum Institute of India, will be making 1 billion doses of the shot for domestic supply and export under its brand Covovax.

Serum Institute will soon start its phase 2 and 3 bridging study showing Covovax is the equivalent of the vaccine developed by Novavax. The firm has already received an approval from Drugs Controller General of India V.G. Somani to conduct the trial.

Serum Institute chief Adar Poonawalla said in January that his company hopes to launch the shot in India by June. He had also said that the company will reserve half the doses it produces for India.

Besides India, Serum will also supply Covovax doses to the World Health Organization-backed Covax facility, which is aimed at providing equitable access to vaccines in low- and middle-income countries.

The efficacy data was from Novavax’s UK trials, where the company enrolled over 15,000 participants, including 27% over the age of 65.

The vaccine was 86.3% effective against the mutant variant discovered in the UK. The overall efficacy across its UK trial was 89.7%, similar to the 89.3% interim efficacy the company had reported in January.

In the UK trial, 106 participants were confirmed to have contracted covid, with only 10 in the vaccine group and the rest in the placebo arm of the trial. Also, five of the 106 people had severe disease, all of them from the placebo group, indicating that the vaccine is effective in preventing severe disease. The vaccine was also effective in adults, where 10 participants over the age of 65 contracted covid-19, but nine cases were in the placebo group. Livemint