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The modern gold rush is called a vaccine, and yesterday was Pfizer’s day announcing its victory. The American giant says its vaccine candidate is 95 percent effective and has had no serious side effects. It thus surpasses the American competitor Moderna that the day before had declared that it had perfected the effectiveness to 94.5 percent. After last week’s breakthroughs, data presented yesterday showed that the antidote prevented both mild and severe forms of Covid-19. And it was 94% effective in the elderly, more vulnerable to developing severe Covid-19 and less likely to have a complete response to some types of vaccines. “The results of the study mark an important step in this historic eight-month journey toward a vaccine that can help end this devastating pandemic,” explained Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer. If the FDA approves the two-dose vaccine, Pfizer said it could have up to 50 million doses available by the end of the year and up to 1.3 billion by the end of next year. About half of the supply will go to the United States this year, enough for around 12.5 million people (out of 330 million). Americans will receive the vaccine for free, under a $ 1.95 billion agreement the federal government reached with Pfizer for 100 million doses. The Pfizer vaccine “whose validation process appears to be the most advanced to date, would allow Italy to administer around 3.4 million doses to 1.7 million people by the end of January 2021. In this perspective, it seems a priority to safeguard those places that during the pandemic represented the main channel of contagion and spread of the virus, such as, for example, hospitals and nursing homes ”. This is what is read in the Anti-Covid Vaccine Plan that the Emergency Commissioner, Domenico Arcuri, sent to the Presidents of the Regions and to the Ministers of Health and Regional Affairs.
For this, in this first phase, the administration of the vaccine could be considered directly in hospitals and, through mobile units, in residential facilities for the elderly ”. Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini has ensured the use of the armed forces for the distribution of the vaccine.
Pfizer and BionTech now intend to publish the results for review in a scientific journal, which can take weeks or months.
Meanwhile, a new study sheds light on immunity that could last at least 8 months, and survivors, even mild forms of the infection, could be protected for years. At least this is what emerged from a study by the La Jolla Institute in California, published on the preprint site medRxiv. Researchers have found that immune cell levels against Covid-19 begin to decline slowly in the months after infection, but enough to block reinfection lasts longer, perhaps years. This is comforting news, given the numerous studies that have suggested that the antibodies disappear within three months.
