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- Pharmaceutical company Pfizer said Monday that its vaccine was found to be more than 90% effective in a successful final stage of clinical trials.
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, called the reported efficacy rate “extraordinary.”
- While Monday’s result indicates a step forward, the vaccine must be approved and widely distributed to the public for life to return to normal.
The nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, expressed his excitement at the news that Pfizer’s vaccine was found to be more than 90% effective.
Fauci said the reported efficacy of the drug company’s 90% vaccine was “simply extraordinary” and noted that this “will have a huge impact on everything we do about COVID,” at a news conference Monday. tomorrow for the HIV Prevention Trials Network. .
“This is a really good day for biomedical research and the clinical application of biomedical research,” he said, adding that “this is very good news for the future.”
Fauci said these results may indicate that a vaccine developed by Moderna, also a candidate for mRNA, could also have positive results as this “validates the mRNA platform.”
He added that this “largely validates” the spike protein as the target of the immune response, which is important because it is the target of “pretty much every other vaccine” besides Moderna’s vaccine. Fauci told STAT that, as a result, this gives a lot of optimism about “what will be implemented in the coming months with the other vaccines.”
On Monday, Pfizer announced that its experimental coronavirus vaccine was found to be more than 90% effective in its final stage of clinical trials.
While this high efficacy rate shows great optimism for a safe and effective vaccine, the road to normality is still some way off.
Pfizer said it is waiting for more data to reach the “required safety milestone” before applying for emergency approval, which they say will likely occur later this month.
Even after it is approved, it will take some time for the vaccine to become widely available to the public, so people should expect to continue wearing masks and socially distancing themselves until enough people are immune to the disease.
President-elect Joe Biden congratulated the development but noted that “it will be many more months before there is widespread vaccination in this country.”
