Curevac not effective enough: the vaccine was probably already planned for the second half of the year

The corona vaccine Curevac has long been considered promising.

Now it turns out: the vaccine apparently only has a provisional effectiveness of 47 percent.

Tübingen - The corona pandemic in Germany is slowly but steadily stabilizing, the Robert Koch Institute is reporting fewer new infections from day to day.

At the same time, many experts have high hopes for the vaccination campaign.

The corona vaccine from the Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company Curevac should also do its part to combat the pandemic.

But now the bitter disappointment: the vaccine probably only has a provisional effectiveness of 47 percent.

Curevac vaccine with bitter setback - vaccine does not meet specified statistical success criteria

In the race to launch another highly effective corona vaccine, the Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company has made a sensitive damper public. On Wednesday evening, the company had to admit in a mandatory stock market announcement that its own vaccine candidate CVnCoV had only achieved a preliminary effectiveness of 47 percent against corona disease "of any severity" in an interim analysis. In doing so, he did not meet the given statistical criteria for success.

The Curevac vaccine candidate has been in the final and therefore approval-relevant 2b / 3 study phase since December - i.e. for around six months.

While numerous competitors have long successfully brought their vaccines to market, Curevac is still collecting data.

It remains unclear for the time being whether Curevac will be able to deliver at all - and if, when.

The federal government had also reportedly scheduled the vaccine for the second half of the year.

As the dpa reports, the vaccine is said to have no longer been listed on the list of vaccine delivery plans recently published by the Federal Ministry of Health.

Corona vaccine in Germany: what's next with the Curevac vaccine?

In view of the massive delay, the company had not only put off its shareholders again and again. Until the beginning of June it had been said that the company expected - depending on the clinical study data - the approval of its vaccine candidate in the EU at least in the second quarter. But shortly afterwards it was announced that the proceedings would be further delayed. It was recently speculated that the Curevac vaccine could possibly be approved in the EU in August. These prospects could also have been resolved after the new data became known.

On the question of how to proceed with the previous vaccine candidate, Curevac did not comment in detail in the communication.

However, the company invited “interested parties” to a conference call on Thursday (2pm).

Curevac CEO Franz-Werner Haas announced that they had hoped for stronger results in the interim analysis.

However, they still want to continue the current study until the final analysis.

"The final effectiveness could still change." SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach wrote on Twitter: "It's a shame, the team from Tübingen deserved success."

Curevac vaccine in Germany: Karl Lauterbach fears that there will be little effect against the Delta variant

The company said the vaccine candidate's effectiveness depends on the age group studied and the strains of the virus. The analysis included the effectiveness against at least 13 Covid variants. The Lauterbach epidemiology concluded from the data published by Curevac: “Different variants were affected. This means that the effect against the Delta variant alone should be even lower. ”In the opinion of many virologists, this virus variant, which first became known in India, is significantly more contagious and causes more severe disease processes.