Covid 19 Coronavirus: AstraZeneca Says US Trial Data Shows Vaccine 79% Effective

AstraZeneca says advanced trial data from a US study on its Covid vaccine shows it to be 79 percent effective.

The US study included 30,000 volunteers, 20,000 of whom received the vaccine, while the rest received sham injections. The results were announced today.

The first findings from the US study are just one set of information that AstraZeneca must submit to the Food and Drug Administration.

An FDA advisory committee will publicly discuss the evidence behind the injections before deciding whether to allow emergency use of the vaccine in the US.

While the AstraZeneca vaccine has been licensed in more than 50 countries around the world, scientists have been waiting for the results of the US study, hoping they will clear up some of the confusion about how well the injections actually work. .

New Zealand has agreements with four Covid-19 vaccine suppliers: Pfizer / BioNTech, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Novavax and AstraZeneca.

In early March, the government announced that it had obtained additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine, bringing its total to 10 million doses, enough to fully vaccinate all New Zealanders.

Based on data provided by the manufacturer, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been shown to be 95% effective in an ongoing large-scale clinical trial.