AstraZeneca said that its coronavirus vaccine has an average effectiveness of 70%. The company tested the vaccine using two different dosing regimens. Some volunteers received just one dose of the vaccine, while others received a half dose initially and then a full dose at least one month later.
The effectiveness of the full dose was just 62%, but it jumped to 90% in the volunteers who were given two doses.
"It could be that giving a small amount of the vaccine to start with and then following it with a bigger amount is a better way of kicking the immune response into action," lead researcher Sarah Gilbert said.
The pharmaceutical company said that none of the volunteers developed severe side effects or required hospitalization after taking the vaccine.
AstraZeneca is preparing to submit its data to regulators around the world to get the vaccine approved as quickly as possible. The company said it plans to manufacture 200 million doses by the end of 2020 and expects to have 700 million doses ready to go by the end of the first quarter in 2021.
AstraZeneca is the third company in recent weeks, following Pfizer and Moderna, to deliver promising results about a potential coronavirus vaccine.
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