Novavax Vaccine Claims To Be 90% Effective Against COVID-19; To File For Authorisation Soon

Novavax has said that its vaccine demonstrated 100 per cent protection against moderate and severe disease, 90.4 per cent efficacy overall, and met the primary endpoint in its PREVENT-19 pivotal Phase 3 trial.  

Image: AFP

US: Biotech firm Novavax on Monday said that its Covid-19 vaccine is highly effective against COVID-19 in a large study and also protects against variants. 

In an official announcement, the vaccine maker announced that NVX-CoV2373, its recombinant nanoparticle protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, demonstrated 100 per cent protection against moderate and severe disease, 90.4 per cent efficacy overall, and met the primary endpoint in its PREVENT-19 pivotal Phase 3 trial.  

Stanley C. Erck, President and Chief Executive Officer, Novavax in an official statement said, "Today, Novavax is one step closer to addressing the critical and persistent global public health need for additional COVID-19 vaccines. These clinical results reinforce that NVX-CoV2373 is extremely effective and offers complete protection against both moderate and severe COVID-19 infection."

"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," Stanley Erck added. 

Developed by the Maryland-based biotechnology company Novavax, vaccine candidate called NVX-CoV2373 is a protein-based vaccine  engineered from the genetic sequence of the first strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease.

NVX-CoV2373 contains purified protein antigen and can neither replicate, nor can it cause COVID-19. It is being evaluated in two pivotal Phase 3 trials. 

Around 30,000 volunteers over the age of 18 were recruited in the US and Mexico trials of the vaccine to evaluate efficacy, safety and immunogenicity, with an emphasis on recruiting a representative population of communities and demographic groups most impacted by the disease. 

In September 2020, Novavax announced an agreement with the Serum Institute of India to manufacture and deliver Coronavirus Vaccine. With the agreement, Novavax increases its manufacturing capacity of NVX-CoV2373 to over two billion doses annually, when all planned capacity has been brought online by mid-2021.