BioNTech CEO: Vaccine 'Christmas present' possible
Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine FOR COVID-19 could have deliveries start before Christmas.
BioNTech's CEO Ugur Sahin said an interview with Reuters on Wednesday that doses of the drugmaker's promising coronavirus vaccine could be made available next month, pending regulatory approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
" If everything goes well we could start to supply the vaccines to Europe and the United States in the second half of December and you can see that of course as a Christmas present but it is of course, of course, of course, most important, to answer all the questions and to get the approval first."
Sahin said U.S. emergency use authorization would be applied for on Friday.
An FDA advisory committee tentatively plans to meet on Dec. 8-10 to discuss the vaccine, a source familiar with the situation said, though the dates could change.
Pfizer and BioNTech said Wednesday that final trial results of their vaccine showed it had a 95% success rate and no serious side effects.
Plus, the vaccine's efficacy was found to be consistent across different ethnicities and ages
"We have more than 94% efficacy in subjects older than 65 years of age and this is of course an important finding because this population, this elderly population has a particularly higher risk for severe COVID-19 disease."
Pfizer said it expects to make as many as 50 million vaccine doses this year, enough to protect 25 million people, and then produce up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
The better-than-expected results from this vaccine plus another from Moderna have raised hopes for an end to a pandemic that has killed more than 1.3 million people and wreaked havoc upon economies and daily life.
