As­traZeneca CEO So­ri­ot plans new study to test that con­tro­ver­sial 90% ef­fi­ca­cy fig­ure, wait­ing for US da­ta be­fore go­ing to FDA

Pas­cal So­ri­ot spent the long Thanks­giv­ing week­end dig­ging As­traZeneca out of a hole, promis­ing to put an end to the ques­tions around its in­ter­im Phase III vac­cine da­ta by con­duct­ing a new study while go­ing to reg­u­la­tors with a large part of what it al­ready has.

As­traZeneca and its part­ners at Ox­ford had ini­tial­ly tout­ed high-lev­el re­sults from two stud­ies con­duct­ed in the UK and Brazil as pos­i­tive. But the en­thu­si­asm was soon shad­owed by con­fu­sion as ob­servers probed in­to how the high­est, 90% ef­fi­ca­cy was seen in a dos­ing reg­i­men giv­en to a small group of vol­un­teers due to an er­ror. Among a larg­er co­hort giv­en the in­tend­ed shots, the vac­cine was on­ly 62% ef­fec­tive, a rate that would’ve been re­spectable had Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech and Mod­er­na not post­ed ef­fi­ca­cy rates of 94%, 95% for their mR­NA can­di­dates. And many weren’t sure what to make of the av­er­age 70% num­ber that As­traZeneca ran in head­lines.

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