AstraZeneca Announces Covid-19 Vaccine With 70 Percent Efficacy

AstraZeneca and Oxford University announced on Monday that they had developed a new Covid-19 vaccine with an efficacy rate of 70 to 90 percent.

Trials indicated the vaccine could prevent 70 percent of the people taking it from becoming ill. The number increased to 90 percent when participants took a “lower first dose” followed by a second, full dose.

Senior CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen said, “It’s definitely, for sure, good to see these good early results.”

“They don’t look as good as the other two that we’ve heard about in the past few weeks,” she added, noting that Pfizer and Moderna are “showing stronger results.”

However, she added, “That doesn’t mean that the AstraZeneca vaccine is useless.”

The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine announced last week, and the Moderna vaccine announced earlier in the month, reportedly have efficacy rates exceeding 90 percent.

“It could be particularly useful in certain populations. Maybe it’s good for some people and not as good for other people,” Cohen said. “They don’t have their results from their U.S. trial yet, and that’s a big chunk of people. So it will be interesting to see what data they get from their U.S. trial.”

“Also, even the data we have now from the U.K. and Brazil, that is still early. There is more to come from AstraZeneca,” she added.

Watch above via CNN.