Shares of Novavax Inc. increased by more than 20% in trading after Thursday, after the company revealed the results of studies that showed that the proposed vaccine COVID-19 is almost 90% effective overall, but much less effective against a new variant.
In a Phase 3 trial in the UK, Novavax NVAX,
the vaccine showed an overall efficacy of 89.3%, but less protection against new variants. Novavax found that the original vaccine was 95.6% effective against the most common form of COVID-19 and 85.6% effective against the new strain originally identified in the UK.
A phase 2b study in South Africa showed that the vaccine was just under 50% effective against a new variant initially identified in that country. After the 49.4% efficacy against the new variant led to a total of 60% in this study, Novavax said it would begin developing a new vaccine specifically for this variant, which was first found in the United States on Thursday.
“A major advantage of our adjuvanted platform is that it uses a very small amount of antigen, allowing the rapid creation and large-scale production of combined vaccine candidates that could address multiple circulating strains of COVID-19,” said Novavax research president. and development, Gregory Glenn said in Thursday’s announcement. “Combined with the safety profile that has been observed in our studies so far with our COVID-19 vaccine, as well as previous studies on influenza, we are optimistic about our ability to adapt quickly to evolving conditions.”
Shares initially increased by more than 10% in trading after hours after the launch of the news, but soon changed and increased by more than 20%. The stock gained 2.2% in regular trading on Thursday and gained more than 1,700% in the last year, like the S&P 500 SPX index,
increased by 14.5%.
Novavax continues to conduct additional studies in the United States and Mexico. The directors planned to further discuss the results in a conference call at 4:30 p.m., Thursday, in the east.