Biotech company Novavax is still hoping to get results from its PREVENT-19 trial, a phase 3 study of its Covid-19 vaccine in the United States and Mexico, sometime in April. The trial has enrolled 30,000 volunteers in more than 100 locations.
“Everyone is registered and we are now monitoring the cases,” Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development at Novavax, told CNN on Tuesday.
“I think at some point in the April period we will have finished this trial. Therefore, we will have three fundamental tests that test our vaccine; this is extremely important to show that your vaccine is safe and can work,” he said. Glenn.
In January, the American biotechnology firm announced that its Covid-19 vaccine had an overall efficacy of 89.3% in a phase 3 clinical trial conducted in the United Kingdom, where it was found to have an efficacy of 95, 6% against the original coronavirus strain and 85.6% against the variant variety first identified in the UK.
The coronavirus vaccine was not one of the first authorized in the United States because the company faced some challenges in building the staff needed to develop such a new vaccine, Glenn said.
“We were a small business,” Glenn said.
In January last year, toward the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Maryland-based company recruited more staff to work on the development of its Covid-19 vaccine in response to the health crisis. said Glenn.
“We had to recruit people and our funding was very low,” Glenn said. “In addition to all the challenges of vaccine development, which is really complicated, we had the challenge of starting a business.”
Glenn added that Novavax “has reached a really good point now” with the creation of the company and the development of the vaccine. The company is still expected to apply for emergency use authorization for the Covid-19 vaccine sometime in the second quarter of this year.