Two doses of a new COVID-19 vaccine from Sanofi and GSK were 100% effective against severe disease and hospitalizations, the companies announced Wednesday.
The vaccine was also 75% effective against moderate-to-severe disease and 58% effective against symptomatic disease in a Phase 3 clinical trial.
And when used as a booster dose after one of the other available COVID-19 vaccines, the new vaccine triggered an 18- to 30-fold increase in antibody levels, the companies said in a statement.
“We’re very pleased with these data, which confirm our strong science and the benefits of our COVID-19 vaccine, says Thomas Triomphe, executive vice president of Sanofi Vaccines.
“The Sanofi-GSK vaccine demonstrates a universal ability to boost all platforms and across all ages,” he said in the statement. “We also observed robust efficacy of the vaccine as a primary series in today’s challenging epidemiological environment. No other global Phase 3 efficacy study has been undertaken during this period with so many variants of concern, including Omicron, and these efficacy data are similar to the recent clinical data from authorized vaccines.”
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How the vaccine works
It was one of four candidates that received billions of dollars for development from Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program to accelerate vaccines. The companies were expected to seek authorization for their vaccine last year, but clinical trials showed