AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine has achieved ‘winning formula’ for efficacy, CEO says

Pascal Soriot says the shot provides ‘100 per cent protection’ against severe Covid disease requiring hospitalisation

The vaccine initially showed an average 70 per cent effectiveness but that level jumped to 90 per cent depending on dosage

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AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot. Photo: Reuters

Published: 6:58pm, 27 Dec 2020Updated: 6:58pm, 27 Dec 2020

The Covid-19 vaccine developed by the British drugs group AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has achieved a “winning formula” for efficacy, the company’s chief executive said on Sunday.

The vaccine, which is currently being evaluated by Britain’s independent medicines regulator, provides “100 per cent protection” against severe Covid disease requiring hospitalisation, Pascal Soriot said in an interview with The Sunday Times newspaper.

He added he believes trials will show his firm has achieved a vaccine efficacy equal to Pfizer-BioNTech at 95 per cent and Moderna at 94.5 per cent.

“We think we have figured out the winning formula and how to get efficacy that, after two doses, is up there with everybody else,” Soriot said explaining data would be published at “some point”.

The UK government announced on December 23 that the developers of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine had submitted their data to the Medicines and Health care products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for approval for a mass roll-out.

The approval is expected to be granted on Monday, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first coronavirus shot to be authorised for use by the UK’s independent medicines regulator and has been given to hundreds of thousands of the country’s most vulnerable people since its roll-out last month.