Thread by @DrEricDing

Good news—Updated Novavax vaccine results.

📌96% effective against symptomatic #COVID19

📌86% for #B117 variant from UK🇬🇧

📌55% for #B1351 variant from South Africa🇿🇦 (among HIV-negative)

📌100% protection against severe disease (all populations) 🧵
ir.novavax.com/news-releases/…

2) “In 🇬🇧 volunteers 65 years of age and older, 10 cases of COVID-19 were observed, with 90% of those cases occurring in the placebo group.”

27% of trial were elderly. So this is very promising it works likely well in elderly.

3) To be clear, the symptomatic efficacy of 96.4% (95% CI: 73.8, 99.5) is against the original virus strain, excluding the #B117 and #B1351.

The 55% against #B1351 lower but still on par with flu vaccines in some years. Still good! We would have accepted >50% when we had none.

4) Here are the updated Novavax trials in UK and South Africa in a fact sheet.

5) A previously reported initial analysis through 60 days indicated that prior infection with the original COVID-19 strain might not completely protect against subsequent infection by the variant predominantly circulating in South Africa.... (old results below)... but...

6) “However, the complete analysis of the 🇿🇦 trial indicates that there may be a late protective effect of prior [COVID]. In placebo recipients, at 90 days the illness rate was 7.9% in baseline seronegative individuals, with a rate of 4.4% in baseline seropositive participants.”

7) Also, side tangent - cancer patients need the 2nd dose earlier for better protection in new study of Pfizer vaccine.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1370046821595279370