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AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine Will Likely Get Tested Again After Trial Error, CEO Says

Due to a manufacturing error, some participants were given a half dose of the vaccine, followed by a full dose.

AstraZeneca will likely conduct another global test of its COVID-19 vaccine after a dosing error in their initial run, CEO Pascal Soriot told Bloomberg News. Due to a manufacturing error, some participants were given a half dose of the vaccine followed by a full dose, rather than the two full doses that were originally intended. The trial showed the vaccine was 62 percent effective for those who received the intended dosage—but 90 percent for those who received the mistaken, smaller dose. “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 said, according to Bloomberg. AstraZeneca’s vaccine, made in partnership with the University of Oxford, is expected to be cheaper than its counterparts from Moderna and Pfizer. However, both Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines demonstrated a higher trial efficacy, at about 95 percent.