Covid-19 vaccine: Pfizer aiming for 50 million doses in next eight weeks
Reuters Picture: Is Illness Trial Initial Results Effective 19 Covid Preventing Clinical At The That 90% Show Vaccine
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is hoping to produce 50m doses before year-end of a new Covid-19 vaccine that has been shown to be 90% effective at preventing illness, according to initial clinical trial results released on Monday.
Pfizer and German drugmaker BioNTech have taken the lead in the international race to find a vaccine against Covid-19 as they released preliminary clinical trial results.
Globally, around a dozen Covid-19 vaccine candidates are in phase three clinical trials at present.
The initial results, which focused on a group of 94 people taking part in the trial, showed that the vaccine was 90% effective in preventing illness. Half of the group received the vaccine and half received a placebo.
The preliminary results were reviewed by an external panel of experts, which did not find any serious safety concerns.
Close to 44,000 people in the US, South America, and Germany signed up for the phase three clinical trials, which began in July.
The company said it will share efficacy and safety data from thousands of participants in the coming weeks and will move to seek drug approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) later this month.
Pfizer expects to produce up to 50m vaccine doses before year-end and up to 1.3bn doses next year.
The mRNA-based vaccine requires two doses, meaning that up to 25m people could be vaccinated this year and 650m next year if the vaccine gets the green light from the FDA later this month.
“Today is a great day for science and humanity," said Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla on Monday. "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.”
It is not clear, however, how long the vaccine’s protection might last and scientists globally will be keen to analyse the final results when they emerge.
The company also said the final vaccine efficacy rate may “vary” as the clinical trials continue.
Speaking to the , University College Cork senior lecturer in biochemistry Anne Moore said the early findings represent a “milestone” in the global quest to find a vaccine.
“This is a major breakthrough that a vaccine can work,” said Dr Moore.
“It is a real milestone. We now have a vaccine that can provide some protection against Covid-19 and we didn’t know that yesterday.”
The 90% efficacy rate is “very encouraging”, she said, but some caution is needed until more trial results and data are made available.
“A key question will be durability; how long people will be protected for,” said Dr Moore.
“The immune response could stay strong for a really long time or for three months, we just don’t know with this vaccine or any of the vaccines being developed.”
Meanwhile, the European Commission has signalled that it hopes to have access to 300m doses of the vaccine from Pfizer.
Tweeting on Monday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said: “@EU_Commission to sign contract with them soon for up to 300 million doses.”
The commission has also been in talks with five other companies, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Johnson & Johnson, and CureVac, to access vaccines if they become available.