‘WE HAVE FOUND THE WINNING FORMULA’
Oxford vaccine IS as effective as the others, says boss of firm making jab
THE boss of AstraZeneca believes Oxford’s scientists have found the ‘winning formula’ for the jab expected to be approved this week.
New data will show the jab is just as effective as other vaccines from companies Pfizer and Moderna, according to Pascal Soriot, chief executive of the pharmaceutical company.
The Oxford vaccine is only 70.4 per cent effective on average while the Pfizer vaccine, so far given to more than 600,000 people in the UK, is 95 per cent effective, published data shows.
The vaccine from US biotech firm Moderna is 94.1 per cent effective at preventing people falling ill with Covid-19. But Mr Soriot, whose firm is manufacturing the Oxford vaccine, said: ‘We think we have figured out the winning formula and how to get efficacy that, after two doses, is up there with everybody else.
‘I can’t tell you more, because we will publish at some point.’
The Government has ordered 100million doses of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine, with around 40million set to be made available by the end of March if it is approved by regulators.
While its headline figure for efficacy is low, the Oxford vaccine has been found to be 90 per cent effective in people given a half dose in their initial jab, followed by a second injection of the standard dose. However this was seen only a subgroup of fewer than 3,000 younger people who took part in trials.
Mr Soriot told The Sunday Times: ‘We would have preferred a simpler set of results, but overall we thought these are positive, they meet the criteria established by regulators around the world.’
On some of the criticism which ensued, he added: ‘We assumed people would be a bit disappointed, that’s for sure. But we didn’t expect that storm.’
The head of AstraZeneca pointed out that the vaccine appears to be 100 per cent protective in preventing people needing hospital care with Covid.
However experts say the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which regulates vaccines, faces a ‘dilemma’ over which doses of the Oxford University jab it might approve for people being inoculated.
The so far unpublished ‘winning formula’ is likely to come too late to assist with that decision, as Oxford University and AstraZeneca have submitted their final data for consideration.
Two standard doses of the Oxford vaccine were found to be only 62 per cent effective.
The more effective half- dose regime was not tested on anyone over the age of 55, raising concerns it may work not work as well in older people, whose immune systems tend to be less efficient.
AstraZeneca said last month it was discussing testing the lower dose of the vaccine on older people in the US as part of a trial of 40,000 people.
Further data is unlikely to come from the UK as there were not many volunteers left to recruit when the initial vaccine results
‘Overall results are positive’
were published. The Oxford vaccine is cheaper than the £15 Pfizer jab – it is likely to be priced at between £2 and £4 in the UK.
Mr Soriot said researchers believe the Oxford jab will remain effective against the variant strain of the virus first found in the UK, which is thought to be behind the spread in the South East and East of England.
Speaking after at least a dozen countries reported cases of the mutated virus, he said: ‘So far, we think the vaccine should remain effective.
‘But we can’t be sure, so we’re going to test that.’ Yesterday the Government announced a further 316 people in the
UK had died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, bringing the total to 70,752. There were a further 30,501 confirmed cases.
This appears lower than a week ago on December 20, when there were 326 coronavirus deaths and a further 35,928 confirmed cases.
But this week’s figures are likely to be higher than reported as Scotland is not releasing death data between December 24 and 28, and Northern Ireland is not providing either case or death data over the same period.
The Christmas and bank holidays may also make the recent rates appear lower.
IT has become a glib cliché in our overexcitable times. But the starting pistol is set to fire on what is undoubtedly a seminal week for Britain.
Barring a trip-wire being discovered in the small print, the Houses of Parliament will approve Boris Johnson’s historic, destiny-defining post-Brexit trade deal.
By one minute past midnight on Friday, we should finally be liberated from the clamps of the sclerotic, protectionist EU – once again, a fully independent nation. The possibilities then will be endless.
On top of that, the key to freeing the country from Covid’s depleting shackles could be delivered by Thursday, with regulators poised to approve the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine. Going from lab to jab in record time, this showcases the very best of British scientific brilliance.
Yes, the Pfizer vaccine proved there was light at the end of the bleak Covid tunnel. But the Oxford injections, which are simpler to deliver because doses can be stored at normal fridge temperatures, offer a bullet train to normality.
Ministers have ambitious plans to inoculate the 15million most vulnerable people by March. If achieved, the risk to the NHS being overwhelmed by a wave of cases will recede – removing at a stroke the main argument for the interminable cycle of crushing lockdowns.
For the sake of the nation’s health and wealth, the Government cannot afford to flunk immunisations.
Every feasible method must be used to accelerate the programme – including drafting in military personnel.
Do ministers ever stop to wonder if the dystopian controls obsessively championed by their doomy scientists, Left- wing academic modellers and technocratic courtiers are actually working?
Every single crackdown imposed so far has had no impact on the virus’s spread.
Yet in the name of the war on Covid-19, which harms a minuscule proportion of those infected, the economy is being sacrificed, jobs ruined, cancer and heart patients going undiagnosed, and hundreds of thousands of seriously ill children left untreated. Doesn’t the cure risk becoming worse than the disease?
To capitalise on Britain’s newly-minted, post-Brexit freedoms, the PM has promising plans to unlock our entrepreneurial spirit, turbocharging prosperity.
But it will come to naught if the economy remains in a Government-induced coma. The public deserve to know how restrictions will be lifted as the vaccine is rolled out.
This week can represent an optimistic, unifying, healing moment for the country after the agonies of Brexit and Covid. It is imperative our leaders do not blow it.