Vaccine frontrunners

More than 40,000 volunteers in the US and other countries are taking part in phase III clinical trials of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine candidate. Last month, the companies gained permission to test the vaccine in children as young as 12. Following an early analysis of results that suggest the vaccine is 90% effective, Pfizer could file for emergency approval this month.

The Australian Government has brokered a deal to make 30 million doses of a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, based on a chimpanzee adenovirus. In September, AstraZeneca halted global trials when a volunteer became ill. Trials restarted within a week in several countries, and the US authorised a restart last month. But a volunteer in a Brazilian trial died of Covid-19 last month. The trial was not paused, which led to assumptions that the volunteer must have received a placebo.

This month, Australia announced two further pre-purchase deals, with Pfizer and Novavax, whose vaccine contains purified pieces of the spike protein of Sars-CoV-2. Early clinical trials performed in Australia showed the vaccine was tolerated well and produced a strong antibody response. In September, Novavax launched a phase III clinical trial in the UK.

Moderna is