COVID-19 vaccine: BioNTech and Pfizer report 90% effectiveness in trials

Germany’s BioNTech and its US pharma partner Pfizer announced on Monday that their vaccine candidate is more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in a trial of over 43,000 participants.

“Today is a great day for science and humanity,“ said Dr Albert Bourla, chairman and CEO of Pfizer in a statement. “The first set of results from our Phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trial provides the initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent Covid-19.”

Based on current projections from the company, it expects to produce globally up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

Pfizer and BioNTech plan to submit data from the full Phase 3 trial for scientific peer-review publication.

Bourla said that they are “reaching this critical milestone in our vaccine development program at a time when the world needs it most with infection rates setting new records, hospitals nearing over-capacity and economies struggling to reopen”.

Source: yahoo