BREAKING—95%—new data from Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine shows 95% efficacy & is “100% effective” in preventing severe illness, says AZ CEO. That’s on par w/ Moderna & Pfizer. No official data yet, but UK said to likely approve in days. HUGE. #COVID19
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-vaccine-boost-for-millions-as-hospitals-near-breaking-point-vj7fpj2hr

2) As u know, Oxford was unhappy with the last trial because of the dosing quirk with the half dose / full dose issue that led to a split finding of 90% in the half-full dose, but 63% in the full-full dose. Hence they said last month they will redo with a new trial. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1332090057826705413

3) Recall the original Phase 3 trial last month was still quite good. 70% overall (averaging across all doses), or 90% in the half-full dose. Oxford was the FIRST to publish formally in a journal! Moderna & Pfizer didn’t publish until later even though they were approved first. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1336720851165728770

4) Why is the Oxford #COVID19 vaccine so critical for the world?

—8-10x cheaper than Moderna/Pfizer

—Does **NOT** require any freezing! Only simple refrigeration.

—Is the #1 vaccine on order worldwide.

Hence a cheap, easy to handle vaccine at 95% is huge!!

5) How much of the world depends on the cheap and easy to transport Oxford/AZ #COVID19 vaccine? Almost 3 bil doses—40% of the entire world ’s order of 7.38 bil doses—by this one vaccine. Everyone is counting on this.

300 mil US & 400 EU is also the largest orders for them.

6) Some are asking why/how the new Oxford/AZ result is different — they retested the vaccine from the previous half-dose/full-dose regimen that had the earlier 90% efficacy.

To be clear, it wasn’t a safety issue before. Some critics said it was dumb luck or <55 age. Hence retest https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1336822962935259142

7) My earlier thread walks thru the denser epidemiological issues with the previous Oxford-AZ low dose trial that got the previous 90% efficacy. In short, they wanted to rerun to make sure. And the 90% result was NOT post-hoc dredging for strong funding, it was pre-registered. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1331913357033664512

8) The Oxford/AZ vaccine is not an mRNA vaccine like Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech’s. Oxford relies on a neutralized adenovirus that is harmless, but “hitchhike” tagged with the spike genes of #SARSCoV2 coronavirus to train our cells to the spike protein. https://www.research.ox.ac.uk/amp/Article/2020-07-19-the-oxford-covid-19-vaccine

9) Oxford scientists say this on the adenovirus vector approach: “ChAdOx1 was chosen as the most suitable vaccine technology for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine as it has been shown to generate a strong immune response from one dose in other vaccines...”

10) “It has been genetically changed so that it is impossible for it to grow in humans. This also makes it safer to give to children, the elderly and anyone with a pre-existing condition such as diabetes. Chimpanzee adenoviral vectors are a very well-studied vaccine type”.