AstraZeneca is likely to run an additional global trial to assess the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine, its chief executive Pascal Soriot was quoted as saying on Thursday after questions over the results from its late-stage study.
Instead of adding the trial arm to an ongoing US process, a new study would be run to evaluate a lower dosage that performed better than a full amount in AstraZeneca’s studies, Soriot was quoted as saying in a Bloomberg News report.
“Now that we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study,” Soriot was quoted as saying in the report.
Soriot said it would probably be another “international study, but this one could be faster because we know the efficacy is high so we need a smaller number of patients”.
The news comes as AstraZeneca faces questions about its success rate that some experts say could hinder its chances of getting speedy US and EU regulatory approval.
Several scientists have raised doubts about the robustness of results showing the experimental vaccine was 90% effective in a sub-group of trial participants who, by error initially, received a half dose followed by a full dose.
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