Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is likely to give an update on its Covid-19 vaccine in late October on whether a COVID-19 (BNT162b2) vaccine it is developing is successful, and will submit it for approval immediately if that’s the case, according to reports. .
Pfizer has enrolled 23,000 patients in vaccine trials as of Wednesday, its chief executive, Albert Bourla, said in an online briefing sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry group International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, Reuters reported.
Pfizer has said it is on track to have enough data for an authorization starting in October. Based on how fast and where it is currently recruiting people for its 30,000-person trial, it will likely be the first US pharmacist with interim data, by Oct. 15, but it won’t have full results until Nov. 17, Airfinity projects. , according to Bloomberg. reports.
The pharmaceutical company has already manufactured hundreds of thousands of doses of the candidate vaccine, including at a plant in Belgium, Bourla added. She is in the race to find a vaccine with her partner, BioNTech from Germany.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked state public health officials to prepare to distribute a potential coronavirus vaccine to high-risk groups in late October, officials showed. documents released by the agency on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, companies testing vaccines in the United States, where the virus has spread more rapidly than in Europe in recent months, may have an advantage in terms of potential volunteers and infections. AstraZeneca said it expects results later this year, depending on the infection rate in the communities where it is conducting the trials. J&J said it still plans to begin its late-stage trial this month, with the first batches of vaccine available for possible emergency use in early 2021, pending study results. Sinovac declined to comment. Moderna declined to comment on the deadline for its data readings.
Pharmaceuticals have already reached agreements to supply hundreds of millions of doses to governments around the world.
The WHO has said that any vaccine must be shown to be effective in at least half of the people who receive it to get approval. It will be important to follow the trial participants long enough to see if serious side effects arise, WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said Monday. Premature approval would make it difficult to continue studying the vaccine in randomized trials, he said. The agency has 176 Covid-19 vaccines in development, of which 33 have entered human trials.
With contributions from the agency
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