Just over a week after saying that its Covid-19 vaccine candidate was more than 90% effective in preventing coronavirus in trial volunteers, Pfizer this morning stated that its effectiveness is 95% and no safety concerns were found.
The drugmaker, which has its global vaccine research and development headquarters in Rockland County, along with its partner BioNTech, also said that a safety milestone required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had been achieved and they would submit a request within days to the FDA for emergency use authorization.
“We continue to move at the speed of science to compile all the data collected thus far and share with regulators around the world,” said Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer chairman and CEO. “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.”
The two companies expect to produce globally up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.
According to a joint statement: “Analysis of the data indicates a vaccine efficacy rate of 95% in participants without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (first primary objective) and also in participants with and without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (second primary objective), in each case measured from 7 days after the second dose.”
They also stated that efficacy was consistent across age, gender, race and ethnicity demographics. The observed efficacy in adults over 65 years of age was over 94%.
