WHO chief praises Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine news as ‘encouraging’

The head of the World Health Organization hailed as “encouraging” the announcement by Pfizer and BioNTech on Monday that their vaccine in trials demonstrated 90 percent effectiveness in preventing Covid-19 infections.

The two drug companies said the vaccine they developed jointly during the Phase 3 trials provided protection to almost all patients seven days after the second of two doses of vaccine.

“We welcome the encouraging news about vaccines from @pfizer & @BioNTech_Group and salute all the scientists and partners around who are developing new, safe and effective tools to defeat # COVID19,” said WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a tweet.

“The world is experiencing unprecedented scientific innovation and collaboration to end the pandemic,” he said.

By mid-October, the WHO 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.

WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said in a tweet on Monday that news from Pfizer and BioNTech should “encourage all # COVID19 vaccine developers to continue clinical trials.”

“The world needs several safe, effective and affordable vaccines to end this pandemic,” he said.