It’s three for three as far as positive outcomes from Covid vaccine trials are concerned. But the announcement from AstraZeneca and Oxford University, at a first glance, may not seem to be as exciting as those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. The figures are a bit of a head-scratcher, so let’s look at them in more detail.
Monday’s results from AstraZeneca and Oxford University state that the combined Phase 3 interim analysis from their COV002 and COV003 studies (based in the UK and Brazil respectively) included 131 Covid-19 cases and that the vaccine was found to be 70.4 per cent effective overall — but that vaccine efficacy in two dosing subgroups was 90 per cent in one and 62 per cent in the other. Unfortunately, the complex design of this trial, in comparison to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna studies, means that its difficult to examine these numbers in more detail and estimate how many Covid-19 cases could have been in each group.
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