Debbie Elrick
The US company Novavax developed the Covid-19 vaccine that was 89.3 percent effective in the Phase Three trial in the UK, but at a lower rate with the South African strain.
Novavax's two-injected NVV-CoV2373 vaccine is also highly effective with the new CoV variant recently discovered in the UK.
Covid-19 vaccine from the American biotechnology company Novavax Photo: Reuters
Novavax said that it began researching vaccines against new strains of the virus in early January and plans to select potential strains over the next few days for clinical trials in the second quarter of this year.
"The NVV-CoV2373 vaccine has a lot of potential to play an important role in addressing this global public health crisis," said company president and chief executive Stanley Erck.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed the research that Novavax achieved as "good news".
"The UK Pharmaceutical Authority will evaluate the vaccine to be made in Teesside. If approved, we will have 60 million doses on order," he added.
The Novavax vaccine is one of six types supported by Operation Expression, a US government vaccine research and distribution project.
Unlike the Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines, which introduce cellular genetic material into the body to make viral proteins, the Novavax vaccine injects the virus's protein directly into the body to trigger an immune response.
Clinical trials in the UK are conducted on 15,000 people aged 18 to 84, of which 27% are over 65 years old.
The protective effect of the vaccine on the original nCoV strain is 95.6% and on the B.1.1.7 strain is 85.6%.
Research in South Africa was conducted on 4,400 patients from September 2020 to mid-January this year.
The study showed that the Novavax vaccine was 49.4% effective in the South African trial, but increased to 60% in the HIV-negative test group, which accounts for 94% of the participants.
These are the first studies to evaluate the effect of Covid-19 vaccine on the strain in the UK and South Africa in practice.
The US on January 28 announced the discovery of the first two cases of the B.1.351 variant, leading to concerns that it could affect the country's rate of infection control.
