AstraZeneca CEO says smaller first dose in COVID-19 vaccine is ‘big plus’
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AstraZeneca’s chief executive officer Pascal Soriot said on Monday that the lower first dose of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine meant more people can be vaccinated more quickly, as the British drugmaker unveiled interim late-stage trial results.
“Being able to vaccinate more people faster is a really a big plus,” he told a briefing.
The British drugmaker said on Monday its vaccine for the novel coronavirus could be around 90% effective without any serious side effects.
The vaccine developed by Oxford University was most effective when it was administered as a half dose followed by a full dose at least one month apart, rather than as two full doses at least one month apart.
AstraZeneca will have 200 million doses of its candidate vaccine developed by the University of Oxford by the end of 2020, with 700 million doses ready globally by the end of the first quarter of 2021, operations executive Pam Cheng said on Monday.
Cheng told a briefing that there would be 20 million doses in Britain by the end of the year, with 70 million doses for the UK by the end of Q1 2021.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine candidate’s late-stage trial results are “intriguing” and more work needs to be done on the finding that an initial half dose of the shot offers more protection, Oxford’s vaccine chief said on Monday.
Phase III trial results of the vaccine candidate found it was 90% effective if administered at a half dose and then at a full dose, or 62% effective if administered in two full doses.
“That 90% is an intriguing result. So when we give a half dose as the first dose (it) means that we’ve got more vaccine available. And then… after the second dose we see 90% protection,” Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told BBC TV.
“I think that’s a really exciting and intriguing result which we need to dig further into,” he said.
