Trial: CureVac COVID Vaccine 47% Effective

BERLIN (AP) – German company CureVac reported Wednesday that preliminary data from end-stage trials of its COVID-19 vaccine showed relatively low effectiveness in protecting people from the disease.

The results appear to be a major setback in CureVac’s efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, and the company’s stock value declined in after-hours trading.

Although all the information on the company’s study, which involves some 40,000 participants from Latin America and Europe, has not yet been reviewed, CureVac noted that preliminary results show that the vaccine is 47% effective against COVID-19 of any gravity.

This does not meet what the company said were its “preset statistical success criteria,” although it did not specify what these were.

The World Health Organization has said that vaccines with an effectiveness greater than 50% deserve to be used, although many of those that have already been approved have a much higher rate.

CureVac said the study was affected by the wide range of variants found among the COVID-19 cases reviewed in the study and that the final results could vary.

“Although we expected a stronger preliminary result, we recognize that demonstrating high effectiveness in this wide variety of variants is challenging,” commented Franz-Werner Haas, CEO of the company, as quoted.

Haas said that CureVac would continue to work on a final analysis and that the “overall effectiveness of the vaccine may change.”

The company said it has forwarded the information to the European Medicines Agency, which is conducting ongoing evaluation of the vaccine.

“The study will continue until the final analysis and all the data will be evaluated through the most appropriate regulatory channel,” said CureVac.

A few weeks ago, German authorities noted that there could be delays in the approval of the CureVac vaccine, which uses mRNA technology similar to that of licensed vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Haas said the large number of variants that CureVac found in their study, with a single case of COVID-19 attributable to the original variant, “highlights the importance of developing next-generation vaccines as new variants of the virus continue to emerge.”

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