Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine attains 90% efficacy in latest trials

Pharmaceutical firm Pfizer said an early evaluation of the trial of the Covid-19 vaccine it was inventing showed it was effective in keeping Covid-19 at bay, a major progress for the world as it awaited a favourable development concerning an outbreak that has killed over 1.2 million people, New York Times reported on Monday.

Pfizer, which was in partnership with German drugmaker BioNTech, issued just few information from the test, based on the initial formal evaluation of the data by a neutral crew of pundits.

It said the review discovered the vaccine was beyond 90% effective in preventing the disease among volunteers without prior record of coronavirus infection.

“This is a historical moment,” said Kathrin Jansen, a senior vice president and the head of vaccine research and development.

“This was a devastating situation, a pandemic, and we have embarked on a path and a goal that nobody ever has achieved — to come up with a vaccine within a year.”

If the results are in tandem with each other, this extent of protection will place it at the same level with childhood vaccines of huge efficacy for diseases like measles. Pfizer said no serious safety fears had been noted.

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It looks to seek emergency nod for the two-dose vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration in the days ahead, after it has received the prescribed two months of safety data.

Company executives said sufficient doses to immunise between 15 and 20 million people would have been produced by year end.

Independent scientists have warned against exaggerating the efficiency of early results before enduring safety and efficacy data are collected. Besides, no one is aware of the durability of the protection the vaccine offers.

Yet, the progress makes Pfizer the first firm to declare favour upbeat results from a late-stage vaccine test catapulting it to the vanguard of a frenetic global race that teed off in January and has evolved at an unprecedented speed.

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