No­vavax fi­nal re­sults show 96% ef­fi­ca­cy in UK tri­al but plunge to about 50% in South African vari­ant

Match­ing Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na, No­vavax un­veiled fi­nal re­sults Thurs­day af­ter­noon from its Covid-19 vac­cine tri­als in the UK and South Africa, show­ing its can­di­date proved to be 96% ef­fec­tive against mild, mod­er­ate and se­vere Covid-19 cas­es in the UK.

And while the vac­cine post­ed just 50% ef­fi­ca­cy against the South African vari­ant, across both tri­als the shot demon­strat­ed com­plete pro­tec­tion against se­vere Covid-19, in­clud­ing all hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths, No­vavax said. But with on­ly five se­vere cas­es oc­cur­ring in the place­bo arms of each tri­al, some physi­cians are ques­tion­ing whether that’s enough da­ta to ac­tu­al­ly show com­plete pro­tec­tion.

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