Tag: Oxford

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Pharma Giants Draw Their Plans Against Omicron

On By ModernMedia
Image by Ivan Diaz on Unsplash

As world leaders seek to reassure an anxious world about the emergence of Omicron, Moderna’s CEO believes that vaccines will not have the same level of effectiveness against the new variant. Meanwhile, other major vaccine developers such as Oxford University maintain that it is still too early as yet to draw conclusions, and existing vaccines can be updated in a matter of months.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said that “in no world” would vaccines protect against Omicron at the same level as they did against Delta. He added that he thought it would be “material drop”, though data was still to come. However, the scientists he spoke to had all said “‘This is not going to be good’.” This is because 32 of the variant’s 50 mutations are on the Spike protein, which current vaccines are designed to target.

He noted the reduced effectiveness of existing vaccines against Delta, saying that scientists had not expected such a high level of mutation to emerge for another two to three years. His comments come in stark contrast to others who stress that there is no information yet to suggest that Omicron is any more serious than previous variants, or that vaccines are less effective against it.

Oxford University released a statement saying they were monitoring the situation, but stood ready to produce a new vaccine if necessary.

“Despite the appearance of new variants over the past year, vaccines have continued to provide very high levels of protection against severe disease and there is no evidence so far that Omicron is any different.

“However, we have the necessary tools and processes in place for rapid development of an updated COVID vaccine if it should be necessary.”

Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla said in an interview with CNBC that his company had already started work on an updated vaccine, which would be ready in 100 days.

In the Netherlands, scientists from the country’s National Institute of Public Health said that they had detected Omicron on flights that had arrived from Southern Africa before the official announcement of the discovery by South Africa. The country is now trying to locate and isolate some 5000 individuals who arrived in the country from the region. 

Categories : COVID VaccinesTags :

Questions Raised over Oxford’s Unusual Vaccine Regimen

On By ModernMedia

The recent announcement of the Oxford’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial being 70% effective up to 90% effective has raised some pointed questions.

The trial had two treatment arms, one receiving two full doses of the AZD1222 vaccine and a half dose plus a full dose, with the doses being administered 28 days apart. The “half dose then full dose”  treatment arm reported the 90% protection. The problem was that the trial was never meant to have such an arm. 

It was noticed that some participants were only receiving a half dose because they were experiencing fewer effects than expected such as arm pain and headache. This was subsequently corrected so that they would still receive the full dose on the second administration.

Of particular concern is that the “90% effectiveness” is based on a much smaller subset of the trial participants, with a correspondingly higher statistical uncertainty. So much so that there is statistical overlap with their lower effectiveness of 62% quoted for the two full doses. Furthermore, the participants were from the initial stages of the vaccine trial, where they were aged 18-55 and therefore have little applicability to the results of the main trial which included older age groups as well. 

The details of exactly why the half-measure doses came to be administered in the first place have not been revealed by Oxford or AstraZeneca. Meanwhile in the US, a Phase III of the trial is being rolled out with 40 000 participants, and the “half dose then full dose” regimen may be included – however, uncertainty about it and whether it isn’t a statistical fluke will have to be cleared up first.

Source: Ars Technica