[ad_1]
During phase 3 of the vaccine trials in South Africa, no cases of the disease were reported in patients vaccinated with the second dose of the vaccine, the companies said in a statement.
Several supposedly more contagious strains of coronavirus have raised widespread concern about whether vaccines have been developed to protect the world from the ever-mutating virus.
“Nine cases of COVID-19 were identified in South Africa, where variant B.1.351 predominates and (the study) involved 800 people, all in the placebo group,” the vaccine manufacturers said.
All nine affected people were found to be infected with the B.1.351 virus variant, they reported.
“The high efficacy of the vaccine, which lasts up to six months after the second dose and protects against the predominant strain of PAR, increases confidence in the effectiveness of our vaccine overall,” said Albert Bourla, director of US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. . .
Based on observations from 46,307 subjects in various countries around the world, the vaccine’s efficacy in protecting against COVID-19 is 91.3 percent.
Of the 927 symptomatic COVID-19 cases confirmed in the trials, 850 were reported in the placebo group and 77 in the vaccine group.
The vaccine provides 100 percent protection against the severe form of COVID-19, as defined by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 95.3 percent. – in a serious manner as defined by the US Food and Drug Administration.
In January, Pfizer and BioNTech said that the “small differences” found in testing and comparing the parent virus with the latest strains were “unlikely to significantly reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine.”
The manufacturers said Thursday that the new data “confirms previous results from immunogenicity studies showing that (the vaccine) elicits a strong neutralizing antibody response to the B1.351 (PAR) strain, albeit lower than the pathogenic variant. original, but it doesn’t look like “. to affect (vaccine) against this strain ”.
Worldwide, the number of deaths from coronavirus infection has exceeded 2.8 million since the start of the pandemic. Vaccination is considered the only real way to return to a more or less normal life.
[ad_2]
