British pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, announced that the COVID-19 vaccine it is developing with Oxford University is 90% effective and also prevented 70% of trialists from falling ill.
This was disclosed by AstraZeneca on Monday and reported by Reuters and Bloomberg. AstraZeneca said its vaccine was 90% effective when a half dose was issued, followed by a full dose 30 days later.
AstraZeneca joins other major pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer and Moderna in the race to develop a vaccine for the pandemic.
What they are saying
Oxford University said it could be 70.4% effective and tests on two dose regimes show that it could be is 90%.
The company expects to have up to 200 million doses by the end of the year and produce up to 700 million doses by the first quarter of 2021.
The new vaccine also answers issues of vaccine storage and distribution, as it can be kept at basic refrigerator temperature for transport, making it much easier to transport, compared to Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines.
What you should know
Nairametrics reported earlier this month that Pfizer Inc disclosed that its experimental vaccine, which is jointly developed with BioNTech was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19, based on initial data from a large study, in the ongoing phase 3 trials.
Last week, Pharmaceutical company, Moderna Inc, stated its COVID-19 vaccine is 94.5% effective in treating coronavirus, after preliminary analysis of a large late-stage clinical trial.
