Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine Showing 'Really Excellent Data' In UK Trials - Chief Investigator

Prof. Paul Heath, the lead investigator for the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine trial in the United Kingdom, said on Tuesday that he was very keen for the drug developed by the US pharmaceutical company to be approved by the UK medicines regulator because it was showing very high efficacy against the virus, including the UK variant

LONDON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th March, 2021) Prof. Paul Heath, the lead investigator for the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine trial in the United Kingdom, said on Tuesday that he was very keen for the drug developed by the US pharmaceutical company to be approved by the UK medicines regulator because it was showing very high efficacy against the virus, including the UK variant.

"The trial has produced the Primary results and this shows very high efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 around 90 percent effective and that includes against the UK variant," Heath, who is also a specialist in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at St George's University of London, told Sky news broadcaster.

According to the expert, Novavax has proved to be 86 percent effective against the variant first discovered in the English county of Kent last year, and around 95 percent effective against the previous so-called Wuhan strain variant.

"So really excellent data," he stressed, adding that the vaccine is also showing very high levels of safety.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed on Monday that the UK pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline would manufacture the Novavax vaccine in the northeast of England if approved for massive rollout by the UK regulator.

More than 30 million people in the UK have already received their first dose of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines, and the government expects that, by the end of July, all adults in the country � around 52.7 million people � had been offered a jab.