Launch of an ambitious cross-pharma study by the public-private partnership ‘COVIDRIVE’: a multi-country European study to continuously monitor COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against severe disease

Vaccines Europe - 21 Sep 2021

17/09/2021- COVIDRIVE, a long-term, multi-country, hospital-based study investigating the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines across Europe has recently begun with the successful recruitment of its first patient – at a site in Valencia (Spain).

COVIDRIVE consists of a unique, cross-pharma consortium of vaccine companies and research groups who are joining forces to collect real-world data on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. This first COVIDRIVE study will monitor for variants of concern and help provide answers to the critical questions relating to COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, including duration of protection of the different vaccines, impact of additional vaccine doses and different vaccine combinations.

Beginning with initial recruitment of patients from 12 hospitals in Spain and Italy, COVIDRIVE is currently planned for two years and is designed to quickly expand to other countries across Europe. AstraZeneca (UK) and Janssen (Belgium) are the first vaccine companies in this partnership to monitor the effectiveness of their respective vaccines; other partners include FISABIO (Spain), P95 (Belgium), THL (Finland), CureVac (Germany), Sanofi-Pasteur (France) and GSK (Belgium).

As one of the partners in this collaborative study, Thomas Verstraeten (CEO) of P95 has shared his excitement with the development of COVIDRIVE: “With this ambitious study, we will be able to collect essential scientific evidence that allows a lasting control of the COVID-19 pandemic. The performance of the vaccines against future new COVID-19 variants and the duration of vaccine protection are examples of critically important information that will be collected.”

A study team, composed of COVIDRIVE partners, supports the study sites in their data collection and the first interim results are expected within 6 months. All scientific results will be reviewed by an Independent Scientific Committee.

Details on COVIDRIVE are available at the website https://covidrive.eu.

The master protocol can be accessed at the EU PAS register of ENCePP (EU-PAS 42328) and on the COVIDRIVE website.

To join the study as a COVIDRIVE partner or study site, email the COVIDRIVE Coordination team at info@covidrive-eu.org.

Recruiting sites: Centro Interuniversitario per la Ricerca sull’Influenza e le altre Infezioni Trasmissibili (CIRI-IT hospital network, Italy), Hospital Universitario Vall d’Hebron (HUVH, Spain), Hospital Universitario Germans Trias i Pujol (HUGTiP, Spain) and Fundación para Fomento de Investigación Sanitaria y Biomédica de la Comunidad Valenciana (FISABIO hospital network, Spain).