The biotechnology company Novavax still expects to see the results of its PREVENT-19 trial, a Phase 3 study of its Covid-19 vaccine in the United States and Mexico, sometime in April. The trial involved 30,000 volunteers in more than 100 locations.
“Everyone is enrolled and we are now looking for cases,” said Dr. Gregory Glenn, Novavax’s president of research and development, to CNN on Tuesday.
“I think that at some point in the April period we will have completed the test. Therefore, we will have three essential trials testing our vaccine – this is extremely important for the evidence that your vaccine is safe and can work, ”said Glenn.
In January, the American biotechnology company announced that its Covid-19 vaccine had an overall effectiveness of 89.3% in a Phase 3 clinical trial conducted in the United Kingdom, where it was found to be 95.6% effective against the strain coronavirus and 85.6% against the variant strain first identified in the UK.
The coronavirus vaccine was not among the first authorized in the United States because the company faced some challenges in forming the team needed to develop this new vaccine, said Glenn.
“We were a small company,” said Glenn.
In January last year, near the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Maryland-based company recruited more employees to work on developing its Covid-19 vaccine in response to the health crisis, said Glenn.
“We had to recruit people and our funding was a little low,” said Glenn. “In addition to all the challenges of developing the vaccine, which is very complicated, we had the challenge of building a company.”
Glenn added that Novavax “has reached a very good point now” with the construction of the company and the development of the vaccine. The company is still hoping to apply for emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine sometime in the second quarter of this year.