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New research based on early-stage clinical trials shows promising, but conflicting results for Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac Covid-19 vaccine, which is capable of generating a “rapid” immune response in individuals but has produced lower than those recorded in people who had recovered from Covid-19.
Sinovac Biotech reported Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trial results for their CoronaVac … [+]
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Main aspects
While the Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, which involved over 700 participants and published the results in a peer-reviewed paper in Infectious diseases of the lancet The medical journal on Wednesday were not designed to test the effectiveness of the CoronaVac vaccine, the researchers believe it could still provide protection from the novel coronavirus.
Professor Fengcai Zhu, one of the lead authors of the study, believes the early results make the vaccine “suitable for emergency use during the pandemic.”
China has already approved Sinovac’s vaccine for emergency use – way back in August – although more extensive Phase 3 clinical trials will be needed to determine the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Phase 3 trials are ongoing in Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil, with the latter recently resuming after being suspended due to an adverse event in one participant.
Key background
There have been significant advances in Covid-19 vaccines in recent weeks, with Moderna announcing that its vaccine will be nearly 95% effective in the preliminary results of its Phase 3 trials and Pfizer-BioNTech announcing their intention to present. applied for emergency authorization after finding similar results at the end of their Phase 3 study. Both are developed using mRNA technology – which has never been approved in a vaccine before – which is in contrast to the more traditional inactivated virus used in CoronaVac. But although it promises, far more promising than some authorities have stated they are willing to accept (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said it is willing to accept a vaccine that is effective in 50% of people), there is still a lot of uncertainty. with these vaccines, giving CoronaVac hope that it is more traditional and less intensive in its needs. The most problematic will be the distribution and the low temperatures required by Pfizer vaccine could further complicate this aspect, if not make it completely impractical to use in many parts of the world. Distribution, and vaccination more generally, could take months or even years to achieve adequate results around the world, and again not much is known about the duration of immunity. It is very likely that Covid-19, once under control, can become a cyclical disease that stays with us, just like the flu, experts say.
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