The Covid-19 vaccine developed by British pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has produced a “winning formula” of efficacy, the company’s chief executive said Sunday.
The vaccine, which is currently being evaluated by Britain’s independent drug regulator, provides “100% protection” against severe Covid disease that requires hospitalization, Pascal Soriot said in an interview.
He added that he believes the trials will show that his company has achieved a vaccine efficacy equal to Pfizer-BioNTech at 95% and Moderna at 94.5%.
“We believe that we have discovered the winning formula and how to obtain an efficacy that, after two doses, is on par with all the others,” said the CEO, explaining that the data will be published at “some point”.
The UK government announced on December 23 that the developers of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine had submitted their data to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for approval for a mass launch.
Approval is expected to be granted on Monday, The Sunday Telegraph reported the newspaper.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first coronavirus vaccine to be licensed for use by the UK’s independent drug regulator and has been given to hundreds of thousands of the country’s most vulnerable people since its launch last month.
The jab developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford is expected to meet most of Britain’s vaccine requirements, as the government has ordered 100 million doses.
Previous trials have shown variable results in the efficacy of AstraZeneca injection. Initially, the vaccine showed an average effectiveness of 70%, but that level jumped to 90% depending on the dose.
Soriot said he was “surprised” by the initial findings. “We would have preferred a simpler result set,” he added.
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