COVID-19 vaccine can be “90% effective”, according to AstraZeneca.
AstraZeneca on Monday said that its COVID-19 vaccine was 70 percent effective in pivotal trials and could be up to 90 percent effective.
This, as it gave the world’s fight against COVID-19 pandemic a third new weapon that can be easier to distribute, cheaper to make, and faster to scale-up than its rivals.
AstraZeneca said that it would have as many as 200 million doses by the end of 2020, which was around four times as many as Pfizer Inc.
700 million doses could be ready globally as soon as the end of first quarter of 2021.
“This means we have a vaccine for the world,” Oxford University vaccine group director Andrew Pollard said.
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The said vaccine on average prevented 70 percent of COVID-19 cases in late-stage trials in Brazil and Britain and the success rate rose to 90 percent in a group of trial participants who accidentally received a half dose and followed by a full dose.
In addition, the efficacy was 62% if the full dose of COVID-19 vaccine was given twice as it was for most study participants.
According to AstraZeneca, no serious safety events were confirmed, although little safety data was given.
READ ALSO: Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine ‘94.5% Effective’ In Preventing Coronavirus Disease
The COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca used a modified version of a chimpanzee cold virus to deliver instructions to cells in order to fight the target virus, which was a different approach from Pfizer and Moderna.
AstraZeneca would prepare regulatory submission of the data to regulators around the world and would seek an emergency use listing from the World Health Organization (WHO) to speed up the availability of the said vaccine in poor countries.
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