The German company CureVac announced on Wednesday the final results of its late-stage vaccine trial, confirming earlier data showing that its shot is far less protective than other vaccines.

Overall, the CureVac vaccine had an efficacy of just 48 percent against Covid-19. The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which use the same mRNA technology as CureVac’s, delivered efficacy rates around 95 percent in clinical trials.

CureVac’s vaccine proved somewhat better for younger volunteers: For those between the ages of 18 and 60, the efficacy rose to 53 percent. In that group, the researchers also found the vaccine provided 100 percent protection against hospitalization and death.

Forty thousand people participated in the company’s trial in Europe and Latin America. By the end of the study, 288 volunteers had gotten Covid-19.

CureVac had to contend with 15 different variants of the coronavirus. Genetic testing showed that only 3 percent of the cases were caused by the original version of the coronavirus. It’s possible that some of the variants were able to evade the immunity provoked by the CureVac vaccine. (No variants had become widespread in 2020 when Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech ran their trials.)

But vaccine experts have also questioned whether part of CureVac’s problem was with the design of the vaccine itself. The precise recipe that CureVac used to build its vaccine may have blunted its effectiveness.

The European Medicines Agency opened a rolling review of CureVac’s vaccine in February, and the company said it would continue its submission with these data. The vaccine “will be an important contribution to help manage the Covid-19 pandemic and the dynamic variant spread,” Franz-Werner Haas, the chief executive of CureVac, said in the announcement.

Copyright 2021 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with permission.

Three scientific studies released on Monday offered fresh evidence that widely used vaccines will continue to protect people against the coronavirus for long periods, possibly for years, and can be adapted to fortify the immune system still further if needed.

Most people immunized with the mRNA vaccines may not need boosters, one study found, so long as the virus and its variants do not evolve much beyond their current forms — which is not guaranteed. Mix-and-match vaccination shows promise, a second study found, and booster shots of one widely used vaccine, if they are required, greatly enhance immunity, according to a third report.

Continue reading “Three Studies, One Result: Vaccines Point the Way Out of the Pandemic” →

Early results from a British vaccine study suggest that mixing different brands of vaccines can provoke a protective immune response against Covid-19. In the trial, volunteers produced high levels of antibodies and immune cells after getting one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and one dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford shot.

Administering the vaccines in either order is likely to provide potent protection, Matthew Snape, a vaccine expert at the University of Oxford, said at a news conference on Monday. “Any of these schedules, I think could be argued, would be expected to be effective,” he said.

Continue reading “Mixing Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines provides strong protection, according to a preliminary study.” →

Scientists on Friday announced that a massive fossilized skull that is at least 140,000 years old is a new species of ancient human. It belonged to a mature male who had a huge brain, massive brow ridges, deep set eyes and a bulbous nose. The skull had remained hidden in an abandoned well for 85 years, after a laborer came across it at a construction site in China.

The researchers named the new species Homo longi and gave it the nickname “Dragon Man,” for the Dragon River region of northeast China where the skull was discovered. The team said that Homo longi, and not the Neanderthals, was the extinct human species mostly closely related to our own. If confirmed, that could significantly change our view of how — and even where — our species, Homo sapiens, evolved.

Continue reading “Discovery of ‘Dragon Man’ Skull in China May Add Species to Human Family Tree” →

Researchers have found evidence that a coronavirus epidemic swept East Asia some 20,000 years ago and was devastating enough to leave an evolutionary imprint on the DNA of people alive today.

The new study suggests that an ancient coronavirus plagued the region for many years, researchers say. The finding could have dire implications for the Covid-19 pandemic if it’s not brought under control soon through vaccination.

Continue reading “A Coronavirus Epidemic Hit 20,000 Years Ago, New Study Finds” →