Icon: enlarge
Participants in a vaccine study in Johannesburg, South Africa
Photo:
Siphiwe Sibeko / AP
The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company Astrazeneca has presented positive data on its coronavirus vaccine.
The company announced on Monday that this avoids with an average of 70 percent probability of contracting Covid-19.
Both single and double vaccination data from the Phase III study with the vaccine were taken into account.
Accordingly, the AZD1222 agent offered 90 percent protection if participants first received half a dose and a month later a full one.
In contrast, the effectiveness was only 62 percent when the subjects were injected twice a full dose, reports Astrazeneca.
According to the company, there were no serious side effects in the study and the vaccine was well tolerated.
The active ingredient developed jointly with the University of Oxford had long been one of the promising candidates: the EU had already ordered up to 300 million doses of it in advance.
In total, various countries have already ordered billions of cans from Astrazeneca.
Unlike the coronavirus vaccines from the Mainz company Biontech and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, as well as the US company Moderna, the preparation does not belong to the mRNA vaccines.
The active ingredient AZD1222 is based on the weakened version of a chimpanzee cold virus.
It contains genetic material from a surface protein with which the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen docks onto human cells.
The agent is said to promote the formation of specific antibodies and T cells - both are important for the immune system.
Astrazeneca wants to submit the data immediately to the responsible authorities worldwide for early or emergency approval, according to the pharmaceutical company's announcement.
According to preliminary data, the effectiveness of the vaccines from Pfizer / Biontech and Moderna is around 95 percent for double vaccinations.
The Astrazeneca vaccine can be stored according to the information at refrigerator temperatures of two to eight degrees.
Icon: The mirror
wbr / dpa
