The vaccine developed by the German laboratory CureVac is only 48% effective in preventing Covid-19, a much lower rate than other messenger RNA vaccines already approved, according to comprehensive results of a large clinical trial. scale, the company said on Wednesday.
In the trial participants, “the CVnCoV vaccine candidate demonstrated an overall efficacy of 48% (83 cases in the vaccinated group, 145 in the placebo group) against Covid-19 disease, regardless of its severity”, The laboratory, which has signed a major ordering contract with the European Union, said in a statement.
This result was predictable after the publication in mid-June of disappointing interim analyzes of clinical trials of this expected vaccine. The laboratory had questioned the rapid dissemination of the new variants.
Better results in 18-60 year olds
CureVac reports that the performance of its product is slightly better in the 18-60 age group, where the effectiveness reaches 53%. Within this group, the protective effect against moderate and severe forms of the disease reaches 77% and it is 100% in the prevention of hospitalizations and deaths, according to the press release. On the other hand, “in participants over the age of 60, representing 9% of the cases studied, the available data did not make it possible to determine the efficacy in a statistically clear manner”.
Despite this mixed result, CureVac says it is convinced that its vaccine candidate “makes a valuable contribution to public health by fully protecting study participants aged 18 to 60 against hospitalization or death, and with a 77% effectiveness rate against moderate and severe disease progression, “according to CEO Franz-Werner Haas, quoted in the press release.
“We believe that this efficacy profile represents an important contribution to the management of the Covid-19 pandemic and to the management of the dynamic spread of variants,” he adds.
The EMA must decide on its marketing
It is now up to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which has already initiated a continuous review procedure for the vaccine, to give the green light or not to its marketing. The European Commission has signed a contract with biotech for the purchase of 405 million doses.
The BioNTech / Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, also based on the principle of messenger RNA, have demonstrated an efficacy of approximately 95%. That of the AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines is between 60 and 70%.
One of the first laboratories to embark on the vaccine race
CureVac was among the first to enter the vaccine race and was still hoping to bring a high-performance serum to market in May of this year. The laboratory carried out the final phase of its trials on around 40,000 volunteers in Europe and Latin America.
Its officials explained in June that they had to face “a different virus” from competitors because of the “great diversity of mutations” present when the testing phase began in December. Among the cases sequenced during the study, so-called “worrying” variants were identified in more than half of the patients.
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