As­traZeneca read­ies April EUA fil­ing with 79% vac­cine ef­fi­ca­cy, first glimpse of el­der­ly da­ta and 100% pro­tec­tion against se­vere dis­ease in US tri­al

Weeks in­to a chaot­ic vac­cine roll­out in Eu­rope, As­traZeneca fi­nal­ly has the long-await­ed Phase III da­ta it needs to crack open the Amer­i­can mar­ket — with­out the safe­ty scare. How big of a role it might play in the US, though, is less cer­tain.

At the in­ter­im analy­sis, AZD1222 sport­ed a 79% ef­fi­ca­cy at pre­vent­ing symp­to­matic Covid-19 — a fig­ure square­ly in be­tween the 94% or 95% post­ed by its mR­NA ri­vals and 72% claimed for J&J’s sin­gle-shot vac­cine. The re­sults were based on 141 symp­to­matic cas­es record­ed across 32,449 vol­un­teers, who were ran­dom­ized 2:1 vac­cine to place­bo, al­though the break­down wasn’t dis­closed.

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