Medicago’s plant-based COVID-19 vaccine is now approved by Health Canada, which will soon give Canadians the option of getting a homegrown shot against SARS-CoV-2.
Regulators announced the decision to allow its use for adults 18 to 64 years of age on [February 24], making this the sixth vaccine approved in Canada, on the heels of Health Canada’s approval of the Novavax shot last week.
In what the biopharmaceutical company calls a world first, the vaccine from Quebec City-based Medicago uses plant-derived, virus-like particles, which resemble the coronavirus behind COVID-19 but don’t contain its genetic material.
Dubbed “Covifenz,” the two-dose shot’s overall efficacy rate against all virus variants studied was 71 per cent, with a higher efficacy rate of 75 per cent against COVID-19 infections of any severity from the delta variant, then dominant, according to data shared at the time in a press release.
The results followed a global, Phase 3, placebo-controlled study of the two-dose vaccine that was launched last March. This was before the highly contagious Omicron family of subvariants, including BA.1 and BA.2, began circulating, though the company has said the vaccine can be adapted as needed.
