That is below the threshold efficacy level for a vaccine laid out by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the early stages of the pandemic, and comes against a backdrop of almost universal success of other late-stage COVID-19 vaccines in pivotal studies.
Earlier this week, Novavax said its protein subunit vaccine was 90% effective against COVID-19, while mRNA shots from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna also have top-line efficacy rates of around 95%.
Shares in the German biotech crashed following the announcement of the disappointing results, which were blamed on the high proportion of different variants circulating in Europe and Latin America, where the trial was carried out.
