TSR Health: We know many of you aren’t too thrilled about the possibility of having to take a vaccine for COVID-19, but news of its developments is not slowing down. Healthcare and pharmaceutical company Pfizer, has just announced that its vaccine is over 90% effective.
According to Reuters, Pfizer said on Monday that the experimental vaccine it has been working on, alongside BioNTech, has proven itself to be effective in most coronavirus cases they have tried it on. Both companies are the first to release successful data from a clinical trial of the vaccine.
“Today is a great day for science and humanity,” Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive said. “We are breaching this critical milestone in our vaccine development program at a time when the world needs it the most with infection rates setting new records, hospitals nearing over-capacity and economies struggling to reopen.”
The companies said they haven’t found any serious safety concerns in the trial, and hope to get authorization for emergency use of the vaccine sometime this month. If Pfizer gets the okay for it to be authorized, there will reportedly be a limited number of initial doses.
BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin told Reuters that he is optimistic about the vaccine, although there are still so many questions about it.
“This news made me smile from ear to ear. It is a relief to see such positive results on this vaccine and bodes well for COVID-19 vaccines in general,” said Peter Horby, a professor at Oxford University.
As of now, Pfizer is reportedly looking for the United States to authorize emergency use of the vaccine for people aged 16 to 35, which requires the company to provides two months of data from half of the study’s participants.
“I’m near ecstatic, Bill Gruber, one of Pfizer’s vaccine scientists said in an interview. “This is a great day for public health and for the potential to get us all out of the circumstances we’re in now.”
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