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According to preliminary findings, patient protection was achieved seven days after the second of two doses and 28 days after the first.
PARIS – A vaccine developed jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech was 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 infections in ongoing phase 3 trials, the companies announced Monday.
The statement came as coronavirus cases skyrocketed around the world and European stock markets and oil prices soared at the news.
According to preliminary findings, patient protection was achieved seven days after the second of 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 the ability of our vaccine to prevent COVID-19,” Pfizer President and CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.
“We are a significant step closer to giving people around the world much-needed breakthrough to help end this global health crisis,” he said.
“We are reaching this critical milestone in our vaccine development program at a time when the world needs it most.”
In much of the world, COVID-19 infection rates are reaching record levels, with hospital intensive care units filling up and the number of deaths increasing.
Based on supply projections, the companies said they expect to supply up to 50 million doses of vaccines globally in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
The American biotech firm Moderna, several Chinese state laboratories and a European project led by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca are believed to be approaching potentially viable vaccines.
Two Russian COVID-19 vaccines have been registered even before clinical trials were completed, but they have not been widely accepted outside of Russia.
The Phase 3 clinical trial, the final stage, of the new vaccine, BNT162b2, began in late July and to date has enrolled 43,538 participants, 90% of whom have received a second dose of the candidate vaccine at 8 of November.
Pfizer said it is collecting safety data from two months after the final dose, a requirement of the US Food and Drug Administration, to qualify for the Emergency Use Authorization, which is expected by the third week of November .
“We look forward to sharing additional efficacy and safety data generated by thousands of participants in the coming weeks,” Bourla said.
DOZENS MORE CANDIDATES
The so-called messenger RNA vaccine, or mRNA, is a new approach to protect against viral infection.
Unlike traditional vaccines, which work by training the body to recognize and eliminate proteins produced by pathogens, mRNA tricks the patient’s immune system into producing viral proteins.
Proteins are harmless, but sufficient to elicit a robust immune response.
The study will also evaluate the potential of the candidate vaccine to provide protection against COVID-19 in those who have had prior exposure to SARS-CoV-2, as well as the vaccine’s prevention against the severe disease COVID-19.
Pfizer and BioNTech plan to submit data from the full Phase 3 trial for scientific publication for peer review.
As of mid-October, the World Health Organization (WHO) had identified 42 “candidate vaccines” in the clinical trial stage, up from 11 in mid-June.
Ten of them were in the most advanced phase 3, in which the efficacy of a vaccine is tested on a large scale, usually tens of thousands of people on several continents.
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