Another COVID-19 vaccine, Novavax, shows 89% efficacy

A new coronavirus vaccine, Novavax has been shown to be 89 percent effective in large-scale UK trials.

The Novavax jab is the first to show in trials that it is effective against the new virus variant found in the UK, the BBC’s medical editor, Fergus Walsh, has said.

The UK has so far approved three coronavirus vaccines for emergency use – one from Oxford University and AstraZeneca, another by Pfizer and BioNTech, and a third from drug firm, Moderna.

The UK has secured 60 million doses of the jab, which will be made in Stockton-on-Tees in North-east England.

A single-dose vaccine developed by Janssen is said to be 66 per cent effective, going by trial results.

Janssen, a company owned by Johnson & Johnson, is also investigating whether giving two doses will give either stronger or longer-lasting protection.

The company said its initial findings showed one dose prevented 85 per cent of severe cases.

Both the Novavax and Janssen jabs will need to be reviewed by regulators before they can be used.

The PM welcomed the “good news”, with doses of the Novavax jab expected to be delivered in the second half of this year if approved for use by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the government said.

The Novavax jab, which is given in two doses, was shown to be 89.3 per cent effective at preventing COVID-19 in participants in its Phase 3 clinical trial in the UK, and around 86 percent effective at protecting against the new UK variant.

The jab’s efficacy against the original COVID-19 strain was calculated to be 95.6 per cent.

The Phase 3 trials, the final stage before a vaccine is looked at by a regulator, enrolled more than 15,000 people, aged between 18 and 84, of whom 27 per cent were older than 65, US firm Novavax said.

In the South African part of the trial, where most of the cases were, the South African variant of the virus, the vaccine was 60 percent effective among those without HIV.

Stan Erck, Chief Executive of Novavax, said the results from the UK trial were “spectacular” and “as good as we could have hoped”, while the efficacy in South Africa was “above people’s expectations”.

He told the BBC the manufacturing plant in Stockton-on-Tees should be up and running by March or April, with the company hoping to get approval for the vaccine from the MHRA around the same time.

But Minister Lucy Frazer told BBC Breakfast the government could not put an exact timeframe on when the Novavax jab might be approved as the regulation process is “out of our control”.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the new vaccine would be “another weapon in our arsenal to beat this awful virus”, if approved.