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A breakthrough in the race for a Covid-19 vaccine has been announced, with the jab from Pfizer and BioNtech being over 90% effective.
Here’s everything you need to know about the coronavirus vaccine race.
What progress is being made with Covid-19 vaccines?
Currently, more than 200 coronavirus vaccine candidates are being tested around the world.
Roughly a dozen Covid-19 vaccines around the world are currently in the final stages of testing, but that from German biotech company BioNtech and US pharmaceutical company Pfizer is the first to report the results.
There are two pioneers in the Covid-19 vaccine race: Pfizer’s, called BNT162b2, and another being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which is also in phase three of clinical trials.
Other potential vaccines in phase three trials include those from the American pharmaceutical firm Moderna and the biotech company Novavax.
How promising are the results of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine?
They are interim findings and studies will continue, but analysis shows that the vaccine can prevent more than 90% of people from contracting Covid-19.
It has been tested on 43,500 people in six countries and no safety concerns have been raised.
The analysis was carried out after 94 confirmed cases of Covid-19 were found among those who participated in the trial.
The jab is known as a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, which uses the genetic code of the virus rather than any part of the virus itself.
It is injected into the body where it enters cells and tells them to create antigens.
When can we expect results from the Oxford vaccine?
More than 20,000 volunteers are now participating in trials of the Oxford vaccine, which are taking place in countries such as the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil and Kenya.
Professor Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford vaccine testing team, said he is optimistic that data on the safety and efficacy of his vaccine will be available by the end of the year.
Appearing before the UK Commons Science and Technology Committee, he said there is a “slim chance” that a vaccine will be available by Christmas.
The Oxford vaccine, called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, uses a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) that causes infections in chimpanzees.
What other trials are in progress?
As of mid-October, the World Health Organization 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.
Pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline have also partnered in hopes of making a Covid-19 vaccine available by the middle of next year.
The Sanofi / GSK candidate is in phase two, where the vaccine is given to hundreds of people so that scientists can learn more about its safety and the correct dose.
They plan to begin phase three by the end of the year.
Imperial College London is also developing a vaccine against the coronavirus.
The Imperial vaccine is in phase one of clinical trials, where doses are administered to a small group of people to determine if it is safe and to learn more about the immune response it elicits.
Professor Robin Shattock, who leads Imperial College London’s Covid-19 vaccination effort, said data on its efficacy will be available by the middle of next year.
When might a vaccine be available?
Typically, a vaccine takes years, often decades, to develop, but scientists working on potential coronavirus injections hope to accomplish the same amount of work in a few months.
Pfizer and BioNTech plan to apply to the US Food and Drug Administration, the US drug regulator, later this month for emergency approval to use the vaccine.
The European Medicines Agency said it was still reviewing the safety of the vaccine presented by Pfizer and BionNTech and has not received data from clinical trials.
A “continuous review” of several potential vaccines is underway, and for now, the EU is meeting its forecast that one may be approved and available “early next year,” a source said.
Meanwhile, NHS England CEO Simon Stevens said the “expectation” is for any vaccination program to start in the new year, pending positive results from clinical trials.
AFP of additional reports
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