Arab countries are among the least vaccinated in the world

The German company “CureVac” announced on Wednesday that the final results of a large-scale clinical trial it has conducted on its experimental vaccine against Covid-19 have shown that it is only 48% effective for prevent disease, which is a much lower rate than other vaccines that adopt the same “MR” NA (“messenger RNA”) technology.

The company said in a statement that the clinical trial showed that “the investigational CVN-Cove + vaccine demonstrated an overall efficacy of 48% (83 cases in the vaccinated group and 145 cases in the placebo group) against Covid disease -19, regardless of the degree of its severity.

This result was expected since the company published in mid-June the data of the clinical trials it carried out on this vaccine, and the initial results of which were disappointing.

The company attributed this setback to the inclusion of these clinical trials with a large number of viral mutations.

According to its statement released on Wednesday, the CureVac vaccine has shown slightly greater efficacy in adults between the ages of 18 and 60, with efficacy reaching 53%.

In this age group, the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing moderate and severe symptoms of the disease was 77%, while its effectiveness in preventing hospitalizations and deaths from the disease was 100%.

As for the study participants who are over 60 years old, the company was not able to determine the effectiveness of the vaccine statistically because the percentage of these people was not sufficient since it represented only 9% of the total number of participants.

The statement quotes CureVac CEO Frantz Werner-Haas as saying that despite these data, the company is confident that its investigational vaccine “makes a valuable contribution to public health as it provides comprehensive protection for study participants aged from 18 to 60 years against hospitalizations and deaths, and 77% effectiveness in preventing moderate and severe symptoms of the disease.

It is now up to the European Medicines Agency, which is studying these data, to decide whether or not to authorize the use of this vaccine.

The European Commission had signed a contract with CureVac to purchase 405 million doses of its vaccine, if it obtained the necessary licenses.

The efficacy of this experimental vaccine is much lower than that achieved by the Virz / Yaiontech and Moderna vaccines, which use the same mRNA technology, as they have an efficacy rate of around 95%.

The German company, founded in 2000 by German biologist Ingmar Heuer, a pioneer in mRNA technology, announced in May that independent analyzes had “concluded that there were no safety concerns” in the vaccine.

CureVac believes it has advantages that give it an edge over other competing companies, as its vaccine can be stored in regular refrigerators and requires lower doses, resulting in faster production and lower cost for large. quantities.