Covid-19 vaccine: Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine now 95% effective

Covid-19 vaccine
Pfizer says its experimental COVID-19 vaccine is 95% effective | Photo: Reuters.

The pharmaceutical corporation, Pfizer and their German partner BioNTech revealed that the Covid-19 vaccine they have made has proven to be 95% effective.

The partners announced on Wednesday that they have now completed their Phase 3 trial and that they will be submitting their vaccine for regulatory approval “within days” as their vaccine has been proven to be more effective in this trial compared to the previous one, which was only 90% effective.

The latest data revealed by Pfizer and BioNTech shows that their vaccine has overall proven to be 95% effective and 94% effective for the volunteers who were over the age of 65 – the individuals who have a weaker immune system compared to youngsters and are at the most risk from the virus.

This is a huge success for these companies as most of the vaccines that were made has proven to be considerably less effective among older people.

According to the companies, 42% of the participants in this trial were from diverse ethnic backgrounds and 41% were of the ages between 56 and 85 years.

The statement revealed by the companies disclosed that they had given two doses to 41,135 adult and that none of them had serious side effects for the vaccine. However, 3.7 percent of participants had experienced fatigue and 2 percent had a headache due to the vaccine.

Despite this, the companies assured that although the full trial data has not been published yet, they has been no serious safety concerns regarding the vaccines and that it is completely safe.

However, the companies are still not sure for how long the vaccine will last and whether it will stop the people from transmitting the virus from one to another.

“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.”

Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer chairman and CEO, said in the joint statement that was released by the two companies.

Pfizer said that currently they are aiming to manufacture 50 million doses of their vaccine in 2020 and 1.3 billion in the upcoming year. If the company is successful in doing so, the fear of the Covid-19 pandemic will finally come to an end before the year 2021 starts.

Along with this vaccine, another vaccine from a biotech company named Moderna had also revealed that they had received an effective result from their latest trial. According to Moderna, the early analysis of their Phase 3 trial suggested its vaccine was 94.5 percent effective. This is the second vaccine released in the US to have such high effectiveness after the vaccine of Pfizer and BioNTech.