Feb. 23 (UPI) —<\/span> A new vaccine against COVID-19 offers 100% protection against hospitalization, its makers said Wednesday, and they plan to seek regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency as soon as possible.<\/p>\n The vaccine could be used as an alternative to the currently available products from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, or as a booster for them, they said.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n In a recently completed clinical trial of more than 10,000 adults, two doses of the vaccine had “100% efficacy against severe COVID-19 disease, as measured by hospitalizations, according to the manufacturers.<\/p>\n In that phase 3 clinical trial, the last stage of drug and vaccine product research and development, the new Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline vaccine provided 75% protection against moderate-to-severe COVID-19, they said.\n<\/p>\n It also gave 58% protection against symptomatic illness following infection, according to the manufacturers.<\/p>\n Although these figures are lower than those initially seen in early clinical trials of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, both of which are made using mRNA technology, they are “in line with expected vaccine effectiveness,” the companies said in a statement.<\/p>\n This is particularly the case “in today’s environment dominated by variants of concern,” such as Omicron and Delta, which differ significantly from the version of the virus that causes COVID-19 in circulation at the time the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots were first developed, they said.\n<\/p>\n When used as a booster shot following administration of one of the other available vaccines, the Sanofi-GSK product increased antibody levels by 18-fold to 30-fold, they said.<\/p>\n Antibodies are proteins produced by the immune system to fight off viruses, and vaccines are designed to boost their levels in the human body.<\/p>\n Sanofi and GSK had planned to apply for FDA clearance for the vaccine late last year, but delayed the process after earlier clinical trials yielded disappointing results in older adults.<\/p>\n However, the recently completed phase 3 trial tested a stronger version of the vaccine, executives said.<\/p>\n Currently available COVID-19 vaccines target a virus protein called spike, Stephen S. Morse, an expert in emerging infectious diseases, told UPI in an email in January.<\/p>\n The mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech contain the genetic instructions for making the protein, said Morse, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University in New York City.<\/p>\n The Sanofi-GSK vaccine uses a slightly modified version of the protein to produce an immune response, a more commonly used approach for vaccines, including the flu shot, executives from both companies said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" France’s Sanofi and Britain’s GSK announced Wednesday they will seek regulatory approval for their COVID-19 vaccine. File Photo by Yoan Valat\/EPA-EFE Feb. 23 (UPI) — A new vaccine against COVID-19 offers 100% protection against hospitalization, its makers said Wednesday, and they plan to seek regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the European […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1001613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[261,5371,3905,102,5372,990],"class_list":["post-1001612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-covid19","tag-efficacy","tag-hospitalization","tag-offers","tag-sanofigsk","tag-vaccine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Sanofi\/GSK:](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/SanofiGSK-New-COVID-19-vaccine-offers-100-efficacy-against-hospitalization.jpg\" "\\"Sanofi\/GSK:")
\n<\/div>\nFrance’s Sanofi and Britain’s GSK announced Wednesday they will seek regulatory approval for their COVID-19 vaccine. File Photo by Yoan Valat\/EPA-EFE<\/p>\n