It’s three from three as far as positive outcomes from COVID vaccine trials are concerned but Monday’s announcement from AstraZeneca and Oxford University, at a first glance, may not seem to be as exciting as those from Pfizer and BioNTech, and Moderna. Furthermore, the figures are a bit of a head scratcher, so let’s look at them in more detail.
COVID-19 vaccine announcements are now coming at us thick and fast! Today Pfizer and BioNTech have announced the results of their final analysis on 170 COVID-19 cases, and this time they have provided us with more details.
We know that of the 170 COVID-19 cases in total, 162 were observed in the placebo group versus 8 in the vaccine group, giving a vaccine effectiveness (VE) of 95.1%. It is also reported that the analysis was carried out on at least 43,000 participants, meaning that the 95% confidence interval (CI) for this VE figured is estimated to be around 90% to 98% and a 99% CI would be 88% to 98%. Similar to the Moderna study (results discussed here), success at the final analysis was defined as a posterior probability that the VE was greater than 30% being greater than 98.6% (P(VE>30%|data) > 0.986), and the associated efficacy boundary for success was 52.3%. We can see that today’s reported VE of 95.1% is very far away from 52.3%, meaning that the trial has overwhelming evidence of efficacy.
Another Monday, another COVID-19 vaccine trial delivering some positive news. This week it is Moderna who have announced the results from their first interim analysis, and the numbers are just as impressive as those released by Pfizer and BioNTech last week and discussed here. We also have some actual numbers to take a look at in the Moderna press release, so let’s dive right in…
We are delighted to announce our inaugural PHASTAR 750! During the month of November, teams of five from each of PHASTAR’s UK offices will aim to walk, run, skip, jump, cycle (or anything in between!) 750 miles, encouraging motivation, collaboration and team-work during a time when all our staff are working from home.
With lockdowns comes isolation for so many – so we are proud to be running this competition with the aim of fundraising for Sport in Mind – The Mental Health Sporting Charity, whose aim is to improve the lives of people experiencing mental health problems through sport and physical activity.
A “great day for science and humanity”
Pfizer and BioNTech have today announced results from the first interim analysis from their Phase III study of a vaccine candidate against COVID-19 and have concluded over 90% vaccine effectiveness. Do these results mean that there is finally some light at the end of the very long COVID-19 tunnel? Here’s what we know so far…