“Let’s be very patient,” he told New York Times, according to the New York Times. “I know the stress level is rising. I know how important this vaccine is to the world. ”
He also sought to release political pressure on vaccine outcomes: “This is not a Republican vaccine or a Democratic vaccine. This is going to be a vaccine for the citizens of the world. I hope it will be effective. ”
As the Times noted earlier, Pfizer’s trial design is the fastest of a handful of trips, including tests conducted by Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson. People in Pfizer’s trial receive both doses of the vaccine in a shorter time frame than some other tests. Then, the Times writes, the researchers initially began monitoring the COVID-19 case after a second dose than other tests. Pfizer’s trial design also allows for the first initial glimpse – aka intermediate analysis – in which only 32 volunteers fall ill with COVID-19 at the hearing. It is the opposite of Moderna’s trial, which will do an intermediate analysis after 53 illnesses and AstraZeneca, which will do an intermediate analysis after 75.
Pfizer’s 32-case interim analysis is the first of four planned for the hearing, which is expected to run until 164 cases occur. For the first 32-case analysis, researchers would be optimistic about the likelihood of a vaccine if 26 or more cases were in people who had just received a placebo.
But so far, it does not appear that the 32-case threshold has been found to accelerate the interim analysis, Bourla suggested in a statement today. This is both good and bad news, as the state has pointed out. It is good that the vaccine has not yet clearly failed. But it indicates that the trial is moving at a slower pace than expected, even though it has several international trial sites, including the United States, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Germany and Turkey.
