Novavax COVID-19 vaccine is 90% effective against variants in trial

Novavax on Friday reported immunity and protection against the highly contagious beta variant of the coronavirus. The mutation originally surfaced in South Africa. Read more to find out about the experimental covid vaccine.

Novavax COVID-19 vaccine has 90% efficacy

Novavac Inc., on June 14 that their vaccine proved to be 90 percent effective against a variety of strains in a US-based late-stage trial. The protein-based vaccine candidate also received 89.3% efficacy in a 3rd phase clinical trial in the UK. The vaccine is the first to demonstrate clinical efficacy against both UK and South Africa or beta variant.

In contrast to other COVID-19 vaccines, the Novavax vaccine need not be stored in very low temperatures. According to the company’s protocol, it is stable and stored between 2°- 8°C. This special feature will prove handy for vaccination distribution across the world.

“With today’s results from our UK Phase 3 and South Africa Phase 2b clinical trials, we have now reported data on our COVID-19 vaccine from Phase 1, 2, and 3 trials involving over 20,000 participants,” said Stanley Erck, CEO, and president of Novavax.

“In addition, our PREVENT-19 US and Mexico clinical trial has randomized over 16,000 participants toward our enrollment goal of 30,000. NVX-CoV2373 is the first vaccine to demonstrate not only high clinical efficacy against COVID-19 but also significant clinical efficacy against both the rapidly emerging UK and South Africa variants,” he added.

The new vaccine candidate is highly promising

The company also tweeted highly promising results demonstrated by the new candidate. In addition to the overall 90 percent efficacy, the vaccine can provide 100 percent protection against moderate and severe cases. It shows 93 percent efficacy against the major variants of concern (VOC) and variants of interest (VOI).

“Novavax continues to work with a sense of urgency to complete our regulatory submissions and deliver this vaccine, built on a well understood and proven platform, to a world that is still in great need of vaccines,” he added.