Pfizer reports 90% efficacy for COVID-19 vaccine candidate

Pfizer Inc. today announced that BNT162b2, its mRNA-based vaccine candidate, is more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19, based on early data that has yet to be peer-reviewed. The candidate, developed in conjunction with German firm BioNTech SE, is in its phase 3 clinical study. Pfizer said it enrolled 43,538 participants in the trial, observing no serious safety concerns. Within that trial group, 42% of which were from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds, researchers observed a case split between vaccinated individuals and those who received the placebo that indicates a vaccine efficacy rate above 90%, at seven days after the second dose.

While the Pfizer candidate is not part of the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed, the drug maker says that it intends to produce globally up to 50 million doses of the vaccine in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.