A new vaccine, Novavax, against Covid-19 could very well make its appearance on the market quickly.
US biotech company Novavax has announced that its vaccine candidate was 90.4% effective in a phase 3 trial in the US and Mexico.
Novavax plans to seek emergency use authorization for its vaccine from the United States in the third quarter of this year and is "on track" to manufacture around 100 million doses per month by the end of the third quarter.
This Novavax coronavirus vaccine, called NVX-CoV2373, differs from the three vaccines already in use in the United States.
The vaccine uses what is called recombinant nanoparticle technology and Novavax's adjuvant, called Matrix-M, to stimulate an immune response.
The two messenger RNA vaccines authorized last year in the United States (Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna) both use genetic material to stimulate an immune response.
Johnson & Johnson's single-injection vaccine, which was cleared in February, uses a weakened cold virus as a vector to transmit genetic instructions.
The vaccine is "generally well tolerated"
To justify its results, Novavax published those of its study.
It was launched in December to 29,960 adults at 113 sites in the United States and six sites in Mexico.
Some of the participants received a placebo and some received two doses of the Novavax vaccine 21 days apart.
According to the company, the vaccine is "generally well tolerated" and common side effects included pain at the injection site, lasting less than three days, and fatigue, headache and muscle pain, lasting less than three days. two days.
Also according to Novavax, 77 cases of Covid-19 appeared among the participants during the study.
Sixty-three of the cases involved people in the placebo group and 14 in the vaccine group.
The company noted that all cases in the vaccine group were mild.
There were 10 moderate cases and four severe cases in the placebo group, demonstrating 100% vaccine efficacy against moderate or severe disease, according to Novavax.
Consistency with the first Novavax study
Most of the cases involved people "at high risk", such as those over 65, with certain co-morbidities or with frequent exposure to Covid-19.
The company announced that the vaccine's efficacy was 91% in “high-risk” populations.
Novavax researchers also took a close look at the sequencing data from 54 of the 77 Covid-19 cases in the study.
Based on the sequencing of these cases, the company announced that "the vaccine has an efficacy of 93.2%" against the variants of concern or of interest.
These results are consistent with a first study already carried out in the United Kingdom, according to Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development of Novavax on CNN. “A different continent, a different population, different viruses and yet we are still seeing very good efficiency,” he explained.