A coronavirus vaccine candidate from American pharmaceutical company Novavax is over 89% effective in preventing people from contracting COVID-19, the drug maker announced Thursday. 

The Maryland-based company announced the results of its phase 3 trials in the UK, which were done in coordination with that country's vaccine task force and included the more transmissible, and possible more deadly, UK variant. The protein-based vaccine was tested in trials that included over 20,000 participants.

"NVX-CoV2373 is the first vaccine to demonstrate not only high clinical efficacy against COVID-19 but also significant clinical efficacy against both the rapidly emerging UK and South Africa variants,” Novavax President Stanley Erck said in a statement, using the company's name for its candidate.

"NVX-CoV2373 has the potential to play an important role in solving this global public health crisis. We look forward to continuing to work with our partners, collaborators, investigators and regulators around the world to make the vaccine available as quickly as possible," he added.

A separate Phase 2b trial was also conducted in South Africa, which showed the drug is not anywhere close to being as effective against a variant tearing through that country. That phase two trial concluded with an efficacy of just 49.4% when about 92% of those with COVID-19 had the South Africa variant.

That trial was much smaller than the one in the UK with just 4,400 participants./aa