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Biotech company Novavax still expects to see the results of its PREVENT-19 trial, a phase 3 study of its Covid-19 vaccine in the United States and Mexico, sometime in April. The trial recruited 30,000 volunteers at over 100 sites.
“Everyone’s signed up and now we’re monitoring cases,” Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development at Novavax, told CNN Tuesday.
“I think at some point in April we will have completed this trial. So we will have three pivotal trials to test our vaccine – this is extremely important to prove that your vaccine is safe and can work, ”Glenn said.
In January, the American biotech firm announced that its Covid-19 vaccine was found to have an overall efficacy of 89.3% in a phase 3 clinical trial conducted in the United Kingdom, where it was found to be effective at 95.6% against the original strain of coronavirus and 85.6% against the variant strain first identified in the UK.
The coronavirus vaccine was not among the first to be authorized in the United States because the company faced challenges in assembling the staff needed to develop such a new vaccine, Glenn said.
“We were a small business,” Glenn said.
In January of last year, around the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the Maryland-based company recruited more staff to work on developing its Covid-19 vaccine in response to the health crisis, Glenn said.
“We had to recruit people and our funding was pretty low,” Glenn said. “On top of all the challenges of vaccine development, which is really complicated, we had the challenge of starting a business.”
Glenn added that Novavax had “reached a very good point now” with building the business and developing the vaccine. The company still plans to apply for emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine in the second quarter of this year.
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