(Reuters) – Pfizer Inc. P.F.E.N. Participants mostly showed mild-to-moderate side effects when given placebo in the company’s experimental coronavirus vaccine or ongoing late-stage study, it said Tuesday.
The company said in a presentation to investors that side effects include fatigue, headaches, colds and muscle aches. Some of the participants in the trial also developed favors – including some high favors. The data have gone blind, meaning Pfizer does not know which patients received the vaccine or placebo.
Katherine Jensen, Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development, stressed that the Independent Data Monitoring Committee “has access to unlinked data so they have a safety concern and will notify us if they have not done so to date.”
The company has enrolled more than 29,000 people in a trial of its 44,000 volunteers for testing of the experimental COVID-19 vaccine developing with German partner Bioentech. 22UAy.F.
More than 12,000 study participants received a second dose of the vaccine, Pfizer officials said at an investor conference conference.
The comments follow rival AstraZeneca AZN.L Trials of the Covid-19 vaccine are set to take place worldwide on September 6 after a volunteer in Britain reported serious side effects.
AstraZeneca’s trial resumed in Britain and Brazil on Monday following a green light from British regulators, but is on hold in the United States.
Pfizer expects the outcome to depend on whether the vaccine works in October.
“We believe – given a very strong immune profile and also a prehistoric profile … that the effectiveness of the vaccine is likely to be 60% or more,” said Pfizer’s Chief Scientific Ika Fischer Mikael Dolston.
Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru and Mitchell Irman, NJ in Maplewood; Edited by Arun Kouyur, Shunak Dasgupta and ur Rora Ellis
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