(Adds comment from analysts, updates shares)
By Kate Holton, Josephine Mason and Kate Kelland
LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca said on
Monday its COVID-19 vaccine could be as much as 90% effective,
giving the world's fight against the global pandemic a new
weapon, cheaper to make, easier to distribute and faster to
scale-up than rivals.
The British drugmaker said it will have as many as 200
million doses by the end of 2020, around four times as many as
U.S. competitor Pfizer. Seven hundred million doses
could be ready globally as soon as the end of the first quarter
of 2021.
"This means we have a vaccine for the world," said Andrew
Pollard, director of the Oxford University vaccine group that
developed the drug.
The vaccine on average prevented 70% of COVID-19 cases in
late-stage trials in Britain and Brazil but the success rate
rose to 90% if the vaccine was administered as a half dose
followed by a full dose. The efficacy was 62% if the full dose
was given twice, as it was for most study participants.
No serious safety events were confirmed, the company said.
AstraZeneca's shares fell 4%, on track for their worst daily
performance in six-months, as investors perceived the efficacy
data as disappointing compared with rivals. Pfizer and Moderna
, which reported that their vaccines prevented around
95% of cases, had set the bar for success sky-high.
The AstraZeneca shot does, however, have some advantages
over offerings from U.S. rivals.
The drug's cost to governments works out at just a few
dollars a shot, a fraction of the price of shots from Pfizer and
Moderna, which use a more unconventional technology.
It can also be transported and stored at normal fridge
temperatures, which proponents say would make it easier to
distribute, especially in poor countries, than Pfizer's, which
needs to be shipped and stored at -70C.
The faster roll-out means both rich and poor countries that
had been drawing up plans to ration vaccines can distribute them
more widely, helping to eventually halt the social and economic
disruption of a pandemic that has killed 1.4 million people.
"The bulk of the vaccine rollout programme will be in
January, February, March. And we hope that sometime after Easter
things will be able to start to get back to normal," said Matt
Hancock, health secretary of Britain which has pre-ordered 100
million doses for its 67 million people.
In poor countries, where the logistics of distributing rival
vaccines posed a bigger challenge, the effect of a cheaper and
easier alternative could be even more pronounced. Zahid Maleque,
health minister of Bangladesh, which is buying in 30 million
doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine made in India, called the
findings "really good news".
"The big advantage of having the vaccine is that it can be
stored, transported and handled at 2-8 degrees Celsius, and we
have that storage facility," he said.
The World Health Organization's chief scientist Soumya
Swaminathan called the results "encouraging" and said the health
body looked forward to seeing the data.
"We welcome the efforts of Oxford/AZ to make the vaccine
affordable and easy to store, which will be good for countries
and people everywhere."
"WE'LL BE A LOT HAPPIER"
Nevertheless, there was criticism of AstraZeneca's findings.
Analysts from SVB Leerink, a healthcare-focused investment
bank, said AstraZeneca had not yet disclosed enough information
about safety events that had forced it to temporarily put a
study on hold in the United States.
Leerink noted that only a small number of people had
received the smaller first dose. Of 131 cases of COVID-19 in the
study, researchers did not say how many had received the smaller
initial dose to form the basis for their 90% efficacy finding.
Leerink said it was unlikely the vaccine would be approved
for use in the United States, because the data so far did not
match requirements set by regulators there. AstraZeneca said it
plans to seek approval to modify its U.S. study to get more data
on the smaller initial dose.
Some scientists said all three vaccines could prove
comparable in the end.
"I think it is a real fool's errand to start trying to pick
these three (Pfizer/Moderna/Astra) apart on the basis of
snippets of phase 3 data from press releases," said Danny
Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London.
"For the bigger picture, my suspicion is that by the time we
are a year down the line, we'll be using all three vaccines with
about 90% protection - and we'll be a lot happier."
Pascal Soriot, Astra's chief executive, said the smaller
initial dose was good news, as it meant limited supplies could
stretch further to vaccinate more people.
The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a modified version of a
chimpanzee cold virus to deliver instructions to cells to fight
the target virus, a different approach from Pfizer and Moderna,
which rely on new technology known as messenger RNA (mRNA).
AstraZeneca will now prepare regulatory submission of the
data to authorities around the world that have a framework for
conditional or early approval. It will also seek an emergency
use listing from the WHO to speed up availability in poor
countries.
(Additional reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu, Alistair Smout
and Ruma Paul
Writing by Peter Graff
Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Christopher Cushing and Carmel
Crimmins)
Astrazeneca (AZN)
