Biotech companies, Pfizer and BioNTech have on Wednesday, November 17 revealed that a completed study of their experimental COVID-19 vaccine showed it is 95 percent effective against the virus.
They said the two-dose vaccine had no serious safety concerns and that the companies will apply for emergency use authorization from US regulators “within days”.
It would be recalled that last week, the partnering companies announced that after a preliminary analysis, its product was more than 90 percent effective against the virus.
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The latest development comes as a boost to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic which has devastated the global economy as the number of cases has been surging in the United States and across the world.
Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla expressed;
The study results mark an important step in this historic eight-month journey to bring forward a vaccine capable of helping to end this devastating pandemic.
With hundreds of thousands of people around the globe infected every day, we urgently need to get a safe and effective vaccine to the world.
It can be recalled that biotech firm, Moderna Inc, on Monday also announced that its COVID-19 experimental vaccine was 94.5% effective, in a preliminary study.
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It added that it would apply for emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration in a couple of weeks.
This came right after Pfizer initially announced that its COVID-19 vaccine was about 90% effective in a preliminary study.
US Food and Drug Administration is expect to grant Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna approval for emergency use of their COVID-19 vaccines.
The FDA had imposed a requirement on COVID-19 vaccine makers of having at least two months of follow-up with volunteers after their second dose, taken 28 days after the first, in order to ensure the drugs are safe.
Both vaccines use messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology to deliver genetic material to the body that makes human cells create a protein from the virus. This trains the immune system to be ready to attack if it encounters SARS-CoV-2.
Other vaccines that are in late-stage trials, such as one being developed by Johnson & Johnson and another by Oxford University in partnership with AstraZeneca, use modified viruses to deliver genetic material for the same purpose.
