Novavax vaccine efficacy data promising, encouraging, says govt

The government Tuesday said the efficacy data of Novavax vaccine against COVID-19 is promising and encouraging and its clinical trials are in an advanced stage of completion in India.

Addressing a press conference, NITI Aayog Member (Health) V K Paul said the data available in public domain also indicates the vaccine is safe and highly effective.

"What we are learning from the available data is that this vaccine is very safe and it is highly effective but what makes this vaccine relevant for today is the fact that this vaccine will be produced in India by Serum Institute," he said.

There is preparatory work already accomplished by the Serum Institute and they are also conducting a bridging trial which is in advanced stages of completion, Paul said.

"I am also hoping that they will also start trials on children which is of a special interest to all of us. The pace of vaccination should see a renewed energy from next week onwards when we will realign our efforts, state efforts and effective scale up at ground level is expected. Teams both at the Centre and state are working on building new guidelines for high speed coverage of the vaccination across the country," he added.

Novavax Inc, which has a vaccine manufacturing agreement with Serum Institute of India, on Monday said its COVID-19 vaccine candidate was highly effective with 90.4 per cent efficacy overall and also showed high efficacy against predominantly circulating variants.

The vaccine candidate 'NVX-CoV2373' demonstrated 100 per cent protection against moderate and severe disease, 90.4 per cent efficacy overall, and met the primary endpoint in its PREVENT-19 pivotal Phase 3 trial, Novavax said in a statement.

The study enrolled 29,960 participants across 119 sites in the US and Mexico to evaluate efficacy, safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine, it added.

The vaccine demonstrated 93 per cent efficacy against predominantly circulating variants of concern and variants of interest, Novavax said.