A covid vaccine developed jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech has been shown to be “90% effective” in preventing COVID-19 infections in phase 3 trials, the two laboratories announced on Monday. The European Union has already ordered 200 million doses.
COVID Vaccine trial 3
More than 150 vaccines are currently in development around the world to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Among them, only a few have passed phase 3, the last step before applying for marketing authorization. This sample includes the one developed jointly by the Pfizer laboratory and the German biotechnology company Biotech BioNTech. And the news is good. On Monday, the two companies indeed announced that their vaccine candidate is “90% effective”.
Concretely, we learn that the immunity of the patients would have been obtained seven days after the second of the two doses, and 28 days after the first.
“ The first set of results from our Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial provides initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent COVID-19, ” said Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla. ” We look forward to sharing additional efficacy and safety data generated by thousands of participants in the coming weeks .”
He also evokes a ” real breakthrough essential to help put an end to this global health crisis “.
Up to 50 million doses before the end of the year
These are only preliminary results, but they are nevertheless hopeful. While waiting for the final results, the two companies concerned even plan to submit an emergency use authorization request to the FDA, the US health agency, in a few days.
Subject to this approval, the vaccine could be available before the end of December. If this is the case, the two company laboratories have ensured that they can provide up to 50 million doses of vaccines worldwide before the end of the year, and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021. The European Union, for its part, has already ordered 200 million doses, with an option of 100 million additional doses.
“ We have activated our supply chain, and mainly our site in Belgium, and we are starting to manufacture our vaccine so that it is available as quickly as possible, if our clinical trials are successful and if regulatory approval is obtained. obtained, ”said Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer.
Note that the European Commission has also announced the signing of a contract with the British laboratory AstraZeneca (at least 300 million doses of its vaccine candidate) and with Sanofi-GSK (also 300 million doses).
As Les Échos points out, not everyone in our country will be able to benefit from this first wave of vaccines, if, once again, it is authorized. “It will be up to the High Authority for Health (HAS) to set up a vaccination strategy and to determine the priority populations “, we can read. Namely health and medico-social professionals, and people at risk of severe forms (people over 65 and those with comorbidity).
Finally, it should be remembered that more than 50.3 million cases of infection have been officially diagnosed since the start of the epidemic. Johns Hopkins University also lists more than 1.2 million deaths worldwide.
