India’s hopes to administer two billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines between August and December have received a boost with a new US-made vaccine to be produced in India by the Serum Institute showing high protective efficacy.
The vaccine also showed 93 per cent efficacy against predominantly circulating variants of concern (VoC) or variants of interest (VoI), the company added, reporting the results of a clinical trial on over 29,900 participants at 119 sites across the US and Mexico.
The US-based vaccine maker Novavax announced that its protein-based Covid-19 vaccine has demonstrated 90.4 per cent efficacy against the novel coronavirus infection and 100 per cent efficacy against moderate and severe disease.
“Today, Novavax is one step closer to addressing the critical and persistent global health need for additional Covid-19 vaccines,” Stanley Erck, chief executive officer of Novavax, said in a statement. “These results reinforce that the vaccine is extremely effective and offers complete protection against both moderate and severe Covid-19 infection.”
The Pune-based Serum Institute of India is expected to produce 1 billion doses of the Novavax vaccine during 2021 under a pact between the two companies last September. Novavax, which also has partner manufacturing sites in the Czech Republic, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the UK and the US, has said it will have a global production capacity of over 2 billion doses during 2021.
The Centre has said it expects to procure 200 million doses of the Novavax vaccine from the Serum Institute between August and December this year as part of a plan to acquire and administer over two billion doses during those five months.
The Novavax trial observed 77 Covid-19 cases, 63 among participants who received a placebo and 14 among participants who received the vaccine. All cases in the vaccine group were mild while the placebo group had 10 moderate and four severe cases, yielding a vaccine efficacy of 100 per cent against moderate or severe disease.
