On Monday, Pfizer announced that the vaccine against the coronavirus disease, which is being developed by US pharmaceutical Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech, is almost 90% effective in preventing infections as observed in the ongoing Phase 3 trials.

Pfizer’s chairperson and CEO Albert Bourla said that the first set of outcomes from Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial offers the primary evidence of vaccine’s capability to prevent COVID-19. He further said that they are a most important step closer in offering people around the world a much-required breakthrough to end this global health crisis.

According to preliminary findings, protection in patients was attained after 7 days of the second of two doses, and after 28 days of the first dose. The results are based on an interim analysis which was conducted after 94 participants had contracted the infection. The trial will continue till 164 cases have happened. The primary results will pave a way for several companies to seek an emergency-use authorization from regulators if the further research also confirms that the vaccine is safe.

The companies expect to supply approximately 50 million vaccine doses globally by the end of current year, based on supply projections and up to 1.3 billion vaccine doses will be supplied in 2021. In the meantime, US President Donald Trump has welcomed the announcement as “great news”. Since the outbreak of the pandemic last year, the coronavirus disease has caused havoc in the world and on Monday the total number of global cases have exceeded 50 million in a grim milestone. Whereas the death count is above 1,255,000.

Source: Hindustan Times