7. AstraZeneca aims to vaccinate much of the world with AZD1222
Developer: AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) and Oxford University
Description: AstraZeneca’s vaccine is less expensive than those from COVID-19 vaccine frontrunners Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, but the efficacy of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (AZD1222) is also lower. With an average efficacy of 70%, AZD1222 trails the mRNA vaccines from rivals by approximately 25%. For participants who received half of the initial dose of the two-dose vaccine, however, efficacy was 90%.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was 62% effective when administered in two full doses, according to an interim analysis of a Phase 3 trial. Image courtesy of Oxford University.
In September, AstraZeneca announced that it was voluntarily pausing the Phase 3 trial so an independent committee could review safety data surrounding a single event of an unexplained illness that occurred in the U.K.
Development status: AstraZeneca has released interim results from its Phase 3 trial and published them in the Lancet.
The company says it can produce up to 3 billion vaccine doses in 2021.
AstraZeneca is partnering with the Gamaleya Research Institute, the developers of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V, to test a combination of vaccines to inoculate against SARS-CoV-2.
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