Washington: Novavax Inc. said Thursday that its COVID-19 vaccine appears 89 per cent effective based on early findings from a British study and that it also seems to work though not quite as well against new mutated strains of the virus circulating in that country and South Africa.
The announcement comes amid worry about whether a variety of vaccines being rolled out around the world will be strong enough to protect against worrisome new variants and also the world needs new types of shoots to boost scarce supplies.
The study of 15,000 people in Britain is still underway. But an interim analysis found 62 participants so far have been diagnosed with COVID-19 only six of them in the group that got vaccine and the rest who received dummy shots.
The infections occurred at a time when Britain was experiencing a jump in COVID-19 caused by a more contagious variant. A preliminary analysis found over half of the trial participants who became infected had the mutated…