Maryland-based Novavax said on Monday its COVID-19 vaccine is 90.4% effective and highly effective against variants.
Similar to vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-NBioTech, the biotechnology company’s vaccine is a two-shot regimen. The results were obtained in a roughly 30,000-person trial conducted throughout the U.S. and Mexico as coronavirus variants began to spread.
"Today, Novavax is one step closer to addressing the critical and persistent global public health need for additional COVID-19 vaccines," said Novavax President and CEO Stanley Erck. "These clinical results reinforce that NVX-CoV2373 is extremely effective and offers complete protection against both moderate and severe COVID-19 infection."
In the trial, there were no cases of hospitalization or death among those who received the vaccine. Anyone who was vaccinated was 100% protected "against moderate and severe disease," the company said.
Importantly, the Novavax vaccine has proven to have 93% efficacy against "predominantly circulating" coronavirus variants and 100% efficacy against strains not considered so-called "Variants of Concern."
Side effects proved to be less frequent than those of vaccines already in use.
NVX-CoV2373 is a nanoparticle protein-based vaccine, a news release added.
"These data show consistent, high levels of efficacy and reaffirm the ability of the vaccine to prevent COVID-19 amid ongoing genetic evolution of the virus," said Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of Research and Development at Novavax.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Washington Post the results were "really impressive." The Novavax vaccine was one of six the U.S. government invested heavily in at the onset of the pandemic, the paper reported.
The company intends to file for regulatory authorization through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the fall and projects to produce between 100-150 million doses of its vaccine by the end of the year.
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