AstraZeneca CEO: "We need to do an additional study" on COVID vaccine

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said on Thursday the company is likely to start a new global trial to measure how effective its coronavirus vaccine is, Bloomberg reports.

Why it matters: Following Phase 3 trials, Oxford and AstraZeneca said their vaccine was 90% effective in people who got a half dose followed by a full dose, and 62% effective in people who got two full doses.

• “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, in his first interview since the University of Oxford announced data this week from the vaccine it's developing with AstraZeneca.

Soriot told Bloomberg that it would likely be another “international study, but this one could be faster because we know the efficacy is high so we need a smaller number of patients.”

• Soriot does not expect the trial to affect regulatory approvals in the European Union and the U.K., although FDA clearance may take longer, he said.