Today marks an important milestone: AstraZeneca CEO on Oxford covid vaccine

British drugs firmAstraZeneca and the University of Oxford today said their jointly-developed vaccine against Covid-19 has shown "an average efficacy of 70 percent" in trials.

Commenting on the findings, Pascal Soriot, Chief Executive Officer, said: “Today marks an important milestone in our fight against the pandemic. This vaccine’s efficacy and safety confirm that it will be highly effective against COVID-19 and will have an immediate impact on this public health emergency.

"The vaccine’s simple supply chain and our no-profit pledge and commitment to broad, equitable and timely access means it will be affordable and globally available, supplying hundreds of millions of doses on approval,” Soriot further added.

Professor Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator of the Oxford Vaccine Trial at Oxford, said: “These findings show that we have an effective vaccine that will save many lives. Excitingly, we’ve found that one of our dosing regimens may be around 90% effective and if this dosing regime is used, more people could be vaccinated with planned vaccine supply. Today’s announcement is only possible thanks to the many volunteers in our trial, and the hard working and talented team of researchers based around the world.”

The pooled analysis of the oxford vaccine included data from the Phase II/III trial in the UK and Phase III trial in Brazil.

The firm in a statement said that over 23,000 participants are being assessed following two doses of either a half-dose/full-dose regimen or a regimen of two full doses of AZD1222 or a comparator, meningococcal conjugate vaccine called MenACWY or saline.

The global trials are evaluating participants aged 18 years or over from diverse racial and geographic groups who are healthy or have stable underlying medical conditions.

Clinical trials are also being conducted in the US, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Kenya and Latin America with planned trials in other European and Asian countries. In total, the Company expects to enrol up to 60,000 participants globally.

However,AstraZeneca-Oxford covid-19 vaccine has produced lower average efficacy compared with coronavirus vaccines produced by rivals Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna which have come in above 90 percent.