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news.AstraZeneca and University of Oxford said that interim analysis of a phase 3 programme of the AZD1222 vaccine candidate (also called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) is 70.4% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 for more than 14 days after its second dose.
AZD1222 was licensed from Oxford University by AstraZeneca. (Credit: AstraZeneca)
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The interim analysis for the efficacy of the AZD1222 vaccine candidate was based on 11,636 volunteers accruing 131 symptomatic infections from the phase 3 trials in the UK and Brazil, which were held by Oxford University.
The results of the late-stage trials have been published in The Lancet.
According to AstraZeneca, the vaccine has been shown to have been effective at preventing Covid-19 with no incidents of severe cases and hospitalisations seen after more than 21 days after the first injection.
Additional analysis of the efficacy regimens indicated that when AZD1222 was given as two full doses, vaccine efficacy was 62.1%, while it was 90% in volunteers who were administered a half dose followed by a full dose.
AstraZeneca revealed that 10 volunteers in the control group had to be hospitalised after contracting Covid-19. Of these, two were assessed as severe, which included a fatal case.
AZD1222 has been confirmed by The Lancet publication to be well tolerated, while there were no serious safety incidents noted due to the Covid-19 vaccine candidate.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said: “The results show that the vaccine is effective against COVID-19, with in particular no severe infections and no hospitalisations in the vaccine group, as well as safe and well tolerated.
“We have begun submitting data to regulatory authorities around the world for early approval and our global supply chains are up and running, ready to quickly begin delivering hundreds of millions of doses on a global scale at no profit.”
In a separate development, AstraZeneca signed an agreement with HALIX for large-scale commercial drug substance manufacture of the AZD1222 vaccine candidate.
The manufacturing of the Covid-19 vaccine candidate will be carried out at HALIX’ cGMP facility located at the Leiden Bio Science Park in the Netherlands.
