The developers of the first Covid-19 vaccine, Pfizer and BioNTech, have heralded today a “great day for science and humanity” as a preliminary analysis shows that it can prevent more than 90% of people from getting the disease.
The vaccine has been tested on 43,500 people in six countries – US, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Turkey – and no safety concerns have been raised and the companies plan to apply for emergency approval to use the vaccine by the end of the month.
Around a dozen vaccines reached the final stages of testing, but this is the first to show any results. It uses an experimental approach that involves injecting part of the virus’s genetic code – in order to train the immune system.
Two doses are needed that must be three weeks apart, and the pharmaceutical companies say people are protected a week after the second dose and Pfizer believes it will be able to supply 50 million doses by the end of this year and around 1.3 billion by the end of 2021.