The US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said Wednesday that the two potential vaccines for Pfizer and Moderna may be ready to obtain the approval of the competent US authorities in preparation for their distribution within weeks, which opens the way for a large-scale vaccination campaign that begins before the end of this year.
Officials said that the US states and territories are ready to start distributing the vaccine within 24 hours of obtaining the necessary regulatory approval.
Officials said complex storage requirements would not be a barrier to getting the vaccine for all Americans.
Pfizer and Biontech, the drug maker, said Wednesday that they may obtain approval from US and European regulatory agencies for the emergency use of their Covid-19 vaccine next month, after the results of final trials showed that the vaccine’s success rate is 95 percent and there are no serious side effects.
The effectiveness of the vaccine was found to be stable in different age groups and ethnicities, which is a promising sign.
The success rate of the vaccine, which the American Pfizer and its German partner, Biontech, worked on is the highest of any vaccine tested in the last clinical stages so far, and experts say it is a great achievement in the race to end the pandemic.
Biontech CEO Ugur Shaheen told Reuters TV that the US Food and Drug Administration may grant approval for the emergency use of the vaccine before the end of the first half of December or the beginning of the second half of the month.
He added that conditional approval from the European Union would likely be obtained in the second half of December.
Pfizer said that 170 volunteers in the trial, which included more than 43,000, were infected with Covid-19, but 162 of them got a placebo vaccine, which means that the effectiveness of the vaccine is 95 percent.
Of the ten who became severely infected from Covid-19, one received the vaccine.
A source familiar with the matter said that the FDA's Vaccine Advisory Committee plans to meet in principle from the eighth to the tenth of December, but these dates are subject to change.
Pfizer said it expects to produce up to 50 million doses this year, sufficient to protect 25 million people, and then produce up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
Russian real estate
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that India and China may start production of the Russian vaccine, "Sputnik V", calling on the countries of the "BRICS" group of developing countries to produce the two vaccines, which Moscow said it had developed.
The results of the preliminary experiments showed, Wednesday, that the experimental "Sinovac Biotec" vaccine for the prevention of Covid-19 stimulated a rapid immune response, but the level of antibodies that it produced was lower than the level of those recovering from the disease.
Virus spread
The new Corona virus continues to spread rapidly in various parts of the world, and at the same time governments have entered a feverish race to obtain the vaccines that are expected to be adopted in the next few weeks.
According to figures published by Reuters on Wednesday, the emerging corona virus has infected 55 million around the world, of whom more than 1.3 million have died.
The United States is still the country most affected by the Coronavirus in terms of infections and deaths, with 11.3 million cases recorded so far, and about a quarter of a million deaths.
In second place comes India with 8.9 million injuries, and about 131 thousand deaths, then Brazil with 5.9 million injuries, and more than 166 thousand deaths.
France ranks fourth with more than 2 million injuries, 46 thousand, and 273 thousand deaths, followed by Russia with two million injuries, and 44 thousand deaths.
The virus is spreading spectacularly in Europe, and data from the "Robert Koch" Institute for Infectious Diseases today, Wednesday, showed that 175,61 new cases were recorded in Germany, bringing the total to more than 833,000 infections.
The data revealed 305 new deaths, bringing the total number to 131,191.