原文标题：
CureVac’s Covid-19 Vaccine Disappoints in Clinical Trial
CureVac 的 Covid-19 疫苗在临床试验中令人失望
原文连结：
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/health/covid-vaccine-curevac.html
发布时间：
June 16, 2021, 5:25 p.m. ET
原文内容：
The German company CureVac delivered disappointing preliminary results on
Wednesday from a clinical trial of its Covid-19 vaccine, dimming hopes that
it could help fill the world’s great need.
The trial, which included 40,000 volunteers in Latin America and Europe,
estimated that CureVac’s mRNA vaccine had an efficacy of just 47 percent,
among the lowest reported so far from any Covid-19 vaccine maker. The trial
will continue as researchers monitor volunteers for new cases of Covid-19,
with a final analysis expected in two to three weeks.
“We’re going to full speed for the final readout,” Franz-Werner Haas,
CureVac’s chief executive, said in an interview. “We are still planning for
filing for approval.”
The company plans to apply for authorization initially to the European
Medicines Agency. The European Union reached an agreement last year to
purchase 405 million doses of the vaccine if the agency authorizes it.
Independent experts, however, said it would be difficult for CureVac to
recover. Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, said
that the vaccine’s efficacy rate might improve somewhat by the end of the
trial. But because most of the data is already in, it’s unlikely the vaccine
will turn out to be highly protective. “It’s not going to change
dramatically,” she said.
And with an efficacy rate that low — far lower than the roughly 95 percent
of competing mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — the results
do not bode well for CureVac’s shots getting adopted.
“This is pretty devastating for them,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a vaccine
supply expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think
tank in Washington.
The news was disappointing to experts who had hoped the company could provide
vaccines for low- and middle-income countries that don’t have nearly enough.
CureVac had some advantages over the other mRNA vaccines, such as keeping
stable for months in a refrigerator. What’s more, compared with its
competitors, CureVac’s vaccine used fewer mRNA molecules per jab, lowering
its cost.
The trial results released on Wednesday were based on data from 135
volunteers who got sick with Covid-19. An independent panel compared the
number of sick people who had received a placebo with those who had received
the vaccine. Although the vaccine did seem to offer some protection, the
statistical difference between the two groups was not stark, working out to
an efficacy rate of 47 percent.
Annual flu shots, by comparison, can reach 40 to 60 percent effectiveness.
Both the World Health Organization and the Food and Drug Administration set a
threshold of 50 percent efficacy to consider Covid-19 vaccines for emergency
authorization. If CureVac were to stay at 47 percent in the final analysis,
it would fail to meet that standard.
The results caught scientists by surprise. The vaccine is made from
engineered mRNA, the same technology used by the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna
vaccines. And CureVac’s shots yielded promising results in animal
experiments and early clinical trials.
“This one’s a bit of a head-scratcher,” Dr. Dean said.
Dr. Haas blamed the disappointing results on the high number of virus
variants in the countries where the vaccine was tested. Out of 124 of the
Covid-19 cases that the company’s scientists genetically sequenced, only one
was caused by the original version of the coronavirus.
机翻如下：
德国公司CureVac周三公布了其Covid-19疫苗的一项临床试验的初步结果，令人失望，使
其能够帮助填补世界上的巨大需求的希望破灭。
该试验包括拉丁美洲和欧洲的4万名志愿者，估计CureVac公司的mRNA疫苗的疗效仅为47%
，是迄今为止任何Covid-19疫苗制造商报告的最低疗效之一。该试验将继续进行，研究人
员将监测志愿者是否出现新的Covid-19病例，预计两到三周后将进行最终分析。
"CureVac公司首席执行官Franz-Werner Haas在接受采访时说："我们正在全速进行最后的
解读。"我们仍在计画申请批准"。
该公司计画首先向欧洲药品管理局申请授权。欧盟去年达成协议，如果该机构授权，将购
买4.05亿剂量的疫苗。
然而，独立专家表示，CureVac公司将很难恢复。佛罗里达大学的生物统计学家Natalie
Dean说，在试验结束时，该疫苗的有效率可能会有一些提高。但由于大部分数据已经出来
了，疫苗不太可能变成高度保护性的。"她说："它不会有很大的变化。
而且疗效如此之低