Novavax said on Thursday that its COVID-19 vaccine appears 89% effective based on early findings from a British study and that it also seems to work — though not quite as well — against the new British and South African mutations of the virus, The Associated Press.
The study of 15,000 people in Britain is still underway, but an interim analysis found 62 participants so far have been diagnosed with COVID-19 – only six of them in the group that got vaccine and the rest who received dummy shots.
A preliminary analysis that found over half of the trial participants who became infected had the mutated version. The numbers are very small but Novavax said they suggest the vaccine is nearly 96% effective against the older coronavirus and nearly 86% effective against the new variant.
The results from a smaller Novavax study suggest the vaccine does work against the South African variant but not nearly as well as it does against the variant from Britain, according to AP.