A healthcare worker prepares to inject a vaccine against AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Eloisa Lopez
AstraZeneca released updated phase 3 trial data for its Covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday after being criticized for a preliminary report earlier this week.
The company now says its vaccine is 76% effective against symptomatic virus cases. A press release published on Monday reported a symptomatic efficacy rate of 79%. The updated report claims the vaccine is 100% effective against serious illness and hospitalization.
A group of U.S. health officials in the past few days criticized the company for what some have viewed as data cherry-picking to make the results look more favorable.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced Tuesday that the UK-based company may have included information in its US findings that provides an “incomplete view of efficacy data”.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Officer and White House Director at NIAID, described the situation as “unfortunate” and said it was likely that AstraZeneca would issue a modified statement.
“This is really what you call an easy mistake as it is most likely a very good vaccine,” Fauci told ABC’s Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. “Something like that … really creates doubts about the vaccines and maybe adds to hesitation. It wasn’t necessary.”
The updated results include data from 190 symptomatic cases, an increase of around 50 cases studied compared to the data set published Monday.
The results suggest that the vaccine is more effective than previously thought in patients aged 65 and over, with a newly reported efficacy rate of 85% for this population versus 80% previously reported.
– CNBC’s Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and Steve Kopack contributed to this report.
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