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c0lo [soylentnews.org] writes:

BBC - Covid vaccine: First 'milestone' vaccine offers 90% protection [bbc.com]

he first effective coronavirus vaccine can prevent more than 90% of people from getting Covid-19, a preliminary analysis shows.

The developers - Pfizer and BioNTech - described it as a "great day for science and humanity".

Their vaccine has been tested on 43,500 people in six countries and no safety concerns have been raised.

The companies plan to apply for emergency approval to use the vaccine by the end of the month.

How effective could it be?

A vaccine - alongside better treatments - is seen as the best way of getting out of the restrictions that have been imposed on all our lives.

The data shows that two doses, three weeks apart, are needed. The trials - in US, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Turkey - show 90% protection is achieved seven days after the second dose.

However, the data presented is not the final analysis as it is based on only the first 94 volunteers to develop Covid so the precise effectiveness of the vaccine may change when the full results are analysed.

Guardian - Hopes rise for end of pandemic as Pfizer says vaccine is 90% effective [theguardian.com]

Manufacturing is already under way. Pfizer said they expect to supply globally up to 50m vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3bn doses in 2021. Countries will decide who they prioritise for vaccination. In the UK, the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation has recommended that – presuming the vaccines work well enough in elderly people – the first vaccines go to care home workers and residents, followed by anybody over 80 and other health and social care workers. After that, people are expected to get them in decreasing age order.
...
“We were never part of the Warp Speed,” Kathrin Jansen, a senior vice-president and the head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, said in an interview. “We have never taken any money from the US government, or from anyone.”

BioNTech, the small biotechnology company that is the originator of the vaccine, was founded by two married German scientists, Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, both born to Turkish immigrant parents, and the Austrian oncologist Christopher Huber. It originally set out to develop new types of immunotherapy for cancer, but has concentrated its capacities on the race for a Covid-19 vaccine.

Original Submission