CEO says AstraZeneca likely to run new global trial of COVID-19 vaccine

AstraZeneca is likely to run an additional global trial to assess the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine using a lower dosage, its chief executive was quoted as saying on Thursday amid questions over the results from its late-stage study.

Instead of adding the trial to an ongoing U.S. process, AstraZeneca might launch a fresh study to evaluate a lower dosage of its vaccine that performed better than a full dosage, Pascal Soriot was quoted as saying in a Bloomberg News report.

“Now that we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study,” Soriot was quoted as saying.

Soriot said it would probably be another “international study, but this one could be faster because we know the efficacy is high so we need a smaller number of patients”.

The news comes as AstraZeneca faces questions about its success rate that some experts say could hinder its chances of getting speedy U.S. and EU regulatory approval.

via Bloomberg / Reuters