A woman walks by Pfizer's New York headquarters as city tries to contain a spike in COVID-19 cases. Pic/AFP
Pfizer says more interim results from its ongoing coronavirus vaccine study suggest the shots are 95 per cent effective and that the vaccine protects older people most at risk of dying from COVID-19.
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The announcement, just a week after Pfizer first revealed promising preliminary results, comes as the company is preparing within days to formally ask US regulators to allow emergency use of the vaccine.
Pfizer initially had estimated its vaccine, developed with German partner BioNTech, was more than 90 per cent effective after 94 infections had been counted. With Wednesday's announcement, the company now has accumulated 170 infections in the study — and said only eight of them occurred in volunteers who got the actual vaccine rather than a dummy shot. One of those eight developed severe disease, the company said.
The company has not yet released detailed data on its study, and results have not been analysed by independent experts.
Pfizer said its vaccine was more than 94 per cent effective in adults over age 65, though it is not clear how the firm determined effectiveness in older adults, with only eight infections in the vaccinated group to analyse and no breakdown provided of those people's ages.
Pfizer says it now has the data on the vaccine's safety needed to seek emergency authorisation from the Food and Drug Administration. Pfizer and BioNTech said they expect to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses globally in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
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