Pfizer Says Early Data Signals COVID-19 Vaccine Is Effective

Pfizer announced Monday that a COVID-19 vaccine developed with its partner, BioNTech, has proved to be more than 90% effective and that it plans to ask regulators for permission to sell the shot before the end of this month if pending data shows it is safe.

"Hopefully now we can move on and get this vaccine out there and make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to do and stop” the virus, said Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development, reports The Wall Street Journal.

According to Pfizer, the vaccine proved to be more than 90% effective in the first 94 subjects who had both been infected by coronavirus and had developed at least one of the disease's symptoms, according to the companies. The companies say no serious safety issues have come up in its study, which includes almost 44,000 subjects in the United States and in other countries.

However, health regulators say it will take some time to review the vaccine. The Food and Drug Administration requires that safety assessments include at least two months of monitoring for half of the study's subjects.

Pfizer said it remains on track to collect at least two months of data in the third week of November, meaning it could file for an emergency authorization soon after that.

It is also not clear, though, how long the vaccine will protect against COVID infections, since the study has only been going on for a short time.

“You never know what the outcome is, but we had a feeling that we did everything we could possibly do,” Jansen said.

The vaccine review was conducted by independent experts which then shared its findings with Pfizer and BioNTech.