Novavax Phase 3 trial complete - 90.4%

[red-beard]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/14/health/novavax-covid-19-vaccine-us-phase-3-trial-study/index.html

The study launched in December and enrolled 29,960 adults across 113 sites in the United States and six sites in Mexico. Some of the participants were given a placebo and some were administered two doses of the Novavax vaccine 21 days apart.
The company said the vaccine was "generally well-tolerated" and common side effects included pain at the injection site, lasting less than three days, and fatigue, headache and muscle pain, lasting less than two days.

There were 77 Covid-19 cases that emerged among participants during the study, according to Novavax. Sixty-three of the cases were in people in the placebo group and 14 in the vaccine group.

The company noted that all cases in the vaccine group were mild. There were 10 moderate and four severe cases in the placebo group, demonstrating a vaccine efficacy of 100% against moderate or severe disease, according to Novavax.

[flatbutt]

The party line for their tech:

https://www.novavax.com/our-unique-technology#recombinant-nanoparticle-vaccine-technology

[Tobra]

Wow, that stuff is amazing. All advantages, no disadvantages.

[jyl]

Very impressive. Their trial had a lot of B1.111.7 Alpha (I think that’s the new name, anyway its the UK one) variant, and a smattering of other variants, with little of the original strain. A tougher test than the mRNA vaccines got, and the efficacy was close to the same, which suggests equal efficacy in the real world.

Normal refrigeration and somewhat easier to make. This vaccine has been delayed and NVAX’s ability to manufacture in quantity is uncertain. If they can get EUA in 3Q - will be interesting to see how urgently the FDA, EMA, etc act and if the bar is raised given that effective vaccines are already approved - and actually get production to 150MM/month in 4Q, this could be a real factor in 2022.

Most of the third world doesn’t have the ultracold freezers, dry ice, or fast logistics required for mRNA vaccines, and the AZN and JNJ vaccines have encountered issues of manufacturing, adverse effects and diminished efficacy against the most recent variants Delta (India) and P1 (Brazil, don’t recall the new code name).

A lot depends on India, because that’s where a lot of the world’s vaccine manufacturing capacity is. Much vaccine production has been disrupted by the pandemic in India and the government’s utterly incompetent response.

Speaking of, Delta will be the dominant strain on the US in another month, and it is very roughly 2X as transmissible as the original strain and seems to cause more severe disease in some ways (higher hospitalization rates among younger persons, etc). US states where vaccination rates are low (the South, mostly) are likely to have new Covid surges this fall, unless they really pick up the vaccination pace. Those states won’t reimpose masking or distancing requirements, so if a surge gets started it could run pretty hard.

[unclebilly]

This is the one Canada went ‘all in’ on… but the time it’s ready, most of Canada will have taken the other stuff we could get.

This is what I wanted to get.

I’m not unhappy I didn’t wait (so far).

[jyl]

we’ll be doing periodic re-vaccinations for a while, I’ll bet. data on “mixing” vaccine types is early but no red flags so far.

[Chocaholic]

Red flags. Ha! Good one.