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Pfizer said Friday that it hopes to go ahead with its vaccine after safety data becomes available in the third week of November, weeks after the November 3 presidential election.
WASHINGTON – Two American companies hope to apply for emergency approval for their COVID-19 vaccines in late November, good news as the US crossed eight million confirmed cases amid a third surge to its coronavirus epidemic.
Pfizer said Friday that it hopes to go ahead with its vaccine after safety data becomes available in the third week of November, weeks after the November 3 presidential election.
The announcement means the United States could have two vaccines ready by the end of the year, and Massachusetts biotech firm Moderna is targeting Nov. 25 to apply for authorization.
“Let me be clear, assuming positive data, Pfizer will apply for the use of emergency authorization in the US shortly after the safety milestone is achieved in the third week of November,” said the company’s president and CEO. , Albert Bourla, in an open letter. The news raised the company’s shares by two percent in the United States.
But experts warn that even when vaccines are approved, it will take many months for them to become widely available.
And unlike vaccines against other diseases such as measles, experts believe that COVID-19 vaccines, when they arrive, will be far from being 100% effective.
INDOOR MEETINGS WITH COLD WEATHER
After falling numbers throughout the summer, the country reached a tipping point in its coronavirus outbreak around the second week of September, with a new average daily cases of more than 50,000 according to the latest figures, and the trajectory is ascending.
The United States is the hardest hit country in the world with more than eight million cases and 218,000 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
The United States was never close to returning to its baseline after its first wave in the spring, which means that the current peak can be more accurately termed a third surge.
Geographically, the main hot spots are in the Upper Midwest and parts of the Rocky Mountains in the west, while parts of the Northeast that were the first to be hit hard are seeing their outbreaks reignite.
Harvard surgeon and health policy researcher Thomas Tsai told AFP that there are multiple factors behind the increase in cases, from insufficient evidence in the Midwest to authorities failing to monitor the reopening of bars and restaurants and reopening. call when necessary.
Additionally, “from contact tracing reports from various municipalities and states, the concern is that the spread is now being driven by indoor social gatherings in people’s homes,” he added, as the focus of life Social changes from public to private spaces in colder weather.
One bright sign is that COVID-19 treatments have improved markedly, and with cases more scattered than before, hospitals are not becoming overwhelmed.
The widespread use of masks can also mean that when people become infected, they have less virus in their body, making them less sick.
‘THERE IS NO MAGIC BULLET’
While vaccines are a crucial tool against the virus, experts have warned that they cannot substitute for behavioral measures such as masks and social distancing to curb transmission.
“It’s good news that there is one more thing that can help prevent the transmission of Covid,” said Priya Sampathkumar, an infectious disease doctor and a Mayo Clinic professor.
“But I think we need to be cautious and understand that a vaccine is not a magic bullet,” he added.
Pfizer and Moderna, both funded by the US government, launched Phase 3 of their clinical trials in late July and both were producing their doses at the same time.
Their goal is to deliver tens of millions of doses to the US by the end of the year.
Both are “mRNA vaccines,” a new experimental platform that has never been fully approved before.
Both inject people with the genetic material necessary to grow the SARS-CoV-2 “spike protein” within their own cells, thus eliciting an immune response that the body will remember when it encounters the real virus.
This effectively turns a person’s own body into a vaccine factory, avoiding the costly and difficult processes that more traditional vaccine production requires.
But while the approach may have helped put Pfizer and Moderna first in the vaccine race, a major drawback is that they require freezers for storage, which could limit distribution.
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