US biotech firm Novavax said Thursday its two-shot Covid-19 vaccine showed an overall efficacy of 89.3 percent in a major Phase 3 clinical trial in Britain, and remained highly effective against a variant first identified there.
But the positive news was partly offset by other results that showed it offered significantly less protection against a highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus first identified in South Africa, which is spreading rapidly around the world.
Novavax said it began working on new vaccines against emerging strains in early January and expects to select ideal candidates in the coming days, then begin clinical testing in the second quarter of the year.
“NVX-CoV2373 has the potential to play an important role in solving this global public health crisis,” said the company’s president and CEO Stanley Erck, using Novavax’s name for the vaccine.
“We look forward to continuing to work with our partners, collaborators, investigators and regulators around the world to make the vaccine available as quickly as possible.” (NDTV)