Interim results from a phase 3 trial in Turkey suggest that CoronaVac offers 83.5% protection against symptomatic Covid-19.
The results indicate that CoronaVac offers 100% protection against being hospitalized with Covid-19.
However, a more recent analysis using more data brings both of these figures down significantly.
In a new study presented at the 31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, scientists report that the CoronaVac vaccine offers 83.5% protection against symptomatic Covid-19, based on interim phase 3 trial results.
The scientists also found that the vaccine offers 100% protection against being hospitalized with Covid-19. However, as these are interim results, the degree of certainty over the precise level of protection against hospitalization was relatively low.
The findings, which appear in The Lancet, are further good news for the effectiveness of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.
Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 and its rapid spread around the world, scientists have been racing to produce safe and effective vaccines.
Early vaccine candidates — such as the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — showed positive results, and scientists have shown that they are effective in real-world settings.
However, the scale of distributing vaccines globally, the novelty of SARS-CoV-2, and the cutting-edge technology behind some of the current vaccines all mean that further vaccine development is necessary.
As Dr. Guido Forni and Dr. Alberto Mantovani, on behalf of the Covid-19 Commission of Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, note, “The possibility of having numerous vaccines based on different technologies will allow us to select those that can be most effective in specific phases of the pandemic and different parts of the world.”
The CoronaVac vaccine is an inactivated vaccineTrusted Source. This means it contains an inactivated form of SARS-CoV-2, which is unable to replicate itself.
