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reBiotech companies Biontech and Moderna have come forward, and now British vaccine manufacturer Astra Zeneca has followed suit. Right at the beginning of the week, the drug company released new data from its third clinical study, which is still ongoing.
According to this, the vaccine is 90 percent effective and is only slightly behind that of Biontech and Moderna. They had recently announced 95 and 94.5 percent efficacy for their vaccines. However, AZD1222, the Astra Zeneca candidate, is based on a different technology and is therefore not easily comparable to Moderna and Biontech products.
However, the preliminary results of studies in Great Britain and Brazil are significant, as they show that large-scale global vaccinations and thus the beginning of the end of the pandemic in the next year are increasingly likely.
“The biggest message was without a doubt when one of the companies in the race was the first to report that their Covid-19 vaccine was working,” said Sarah Gilbert, study director at the University of Oxford, which is developing the vaccine. with Astra Zeneca, referring to the success report of the Biontech company from Mainz since the beginning of the month. The fact that various vaccines have now shown such a high level of efficacy in studies is a stroke of luck for everyone.
Effectiveness of about 70 percent
“One manufacturer cannot supply the whole world. It is a question of capacity. This is not a race between companies, but against the virus, ”added Astra-Zeneca boss Pascal Soriot.
But despite all the guarantees: The pressure on the Astra Zeneca team and the University of Oxford must have been great to keep up with their own good news after numerous reports of success from biotech manufacturers.
On average, the company’s own vaccine has so far prevented infections with the virus with a 70 percent effectiveness in the ongoing clinical study, Astra Zeneca announced. Two different vaccination regimens were tested as part of the study. In the first case, the full dose was administered twice with an interval of at least one month, in the second case half the dose was inoculated and the full dose four weeks later.
Vaccination combined with the first half and then the full dose with 90 percent effectiveness has been shown to perform significantly better than the other schedule. For this, there was an effectiveness of only 62 percent. “We cannot explain why this is so,” said vaccination specialist Gilbert. Presumably the immune system was better activated with the weaker first dose.
Three billion cans in planning
The findings also have implications for the distribution of the vaccine. It will be able to administer 40 million doses of vaccines in the UK in the first quarter of next year. This means that 80 million people could now be vaccinated if regulatory authorities grant approval, the manufacturer said, emphasizing: “We will continue to work with regulatory authorities to get the vaccine to people as quickly as possible.”
Astra Zeneca plans to have 700 million doses of vaccines ready for sale worldwide by the end of March. By the end of the year, this could grow to three billion, with a monthly production at full capacity of between 100 and 200 million cans.
“We have created multiple supply chains to ensure timely, comprehensive and equitable access for high- and low-income countries. In 2021 we will be able to make three billion cans available worldwide, of which more than 50 million are destined for Germany alone, ”the company announced at WELT’s request. The EU Commission ordered a total of 300 million cans for Europe in August, with the option of 100 million more.
For global sales, Astra Zeneca has also partnered with the Serum Institute in India, which will also produce an additional 1 billion cans, and another partner in Russia will also produce 1 billion. Also in Brazil, production has already started through a partner company. The group cooperates with a total of 20 partners around the world.
This indicates that the Astra Zeenca vaccine and the University of Oxford should become a vaccine for the world if it is approved. Especially since the manufacturer wants to market the vaccine at a price of three to four dollars and therefore only asks for a fraction of what Biontech and its American partner Pfizer or the American company Moderna ask for.
Moderna boss Stéphane Bancel had confirmed in an interview with WELT AM SONNTAG at the weekend that the price of his own vaccine should be between $ 25 and $ 37. According to the EU Commission, the price of the Biontech vaccine in Europe is around 15 euros. Both vaccines also follow a two-shot vaccination schedule.
No special refrigeration is needed
“It was important for us to create a vaccine that was not just for the rich,” said Louise Richardson, vice president of the University of Oxford. “We wanted to make sure that we didn’t benefit from the pandemic and that our vaccine would be available worldwide.”
Sales at refrigerator temperatures are also not a problem and are a great advantage, especially in emerging and developing countries. Above all, the Biontech and Pfizer vaccine does not yet meet this criterion: the vaccine can only be stored for a long time at an arctic temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius. The German and US team, unlike their two competitors Moderna and Curevac, have yet to come forward with corresponding studies that would possibly also allow for higher temperatures.
While the three mentioned manufacturers are using a new vaccine production method with so-called mRNA technology for their vaccines, the product from Astra Zeneca and the University of Oxford is a so-called vector-based vaccine. A well-researched carrier virus is converted so that it can serve as a gene carrier for the actual vaccine antigen.
Compared to traditional vaccines, the process is still relatively new, but it has already been used, for example, in the search for an Ebola vaccine. Astra Zeneca and the University of Oxford use a weakened version of a chimpanzee adonovirus as a vector for their Covid-19 vaccine.
However, all the vaccines that are currently running have one thing in common: Until now, no one can say how long they protect against Covid-19 infection. The corresponding data is not yet available; not enough time has passed since the search for vaccines began.
