SA expecting ‘encouraging results’ from AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, says Wits
Wits University says similar results from a coronavirus vaccine developed by drug firm AstraZeneca and Oxford University can be expected in South Africa.
South Africa is one of the countries in which tests are being carried out.
"Although these interim results do not include analysis of South African participants in the global trial, they suggest similarly encouraging results can be expected here," says Professor Shabir Madhi, Executive Director of the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit at Wits.
"The findings indicate that the vaccine is 70.4% effective in protecting against Covid-19 in the UK and Brazil when combining data from two dosing regimens."
Madhi says the results are another step in the race to develop a vaccine.
ALSO READ: AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine 70% effective at tackling coronavirus
“The results from this study are intriguing, in that a dose-sparing regimen may inadvertently end up being more protective. This has implications not only for the cost of the vaccine, but also how many more people could possibly be vaccinated in the near future when vaccine supply is likely to be constrained.
“Also, the ability to scale up production of this vaccine, and it only needing to be stored at 28C, would greatly assist in the deployment of the vaccine in low and middle income countries.
“The cost of this vaccine is also anticipated to be much cheaper than other Covid-19 vaccines that have recently been shown to be efficacious.”
