Coronavirus vaccine could be ready by October: Pfizer CEO claims


By MYBRANDBOOK


Coronavirus vaccine could be ready by October: Pfizer CEO claims

Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla said the company is conducting clinical trials in the US and Europe for the BNT162 vaccine programme to prevent Covid-19 in collaboration with German mRNA company BioNTech. Bourla said this while participating at a webinar by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) this week.

 

“If things go well and the stars are aligned, we will have enough evidence of safety and efficacy for us to feel comfortable, for the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) to feel comfortable, and for the EMA (European Medicines Agency) to feel comfortable, to have a vaccine around the end of October,” Bourla was quoted as saying at the event by FierceBiotech. While GSK has joined forces with Sanofi, AstraZeneca is backing the vaccine being developed at the University of Oxford.

 

Pfizer is working with German firm BioNTech for several possible vaccines in Europe and the United States, said the report.

 

Besides, the report also quoted AstraZeneca boss who said that one or more vaccines could begin rolling out by the end of the year. AstraZeneca, in partnership with the University of Oxford, is working to come up with a vaccine and expects at least one could be ready by the end of 2020.

 

"The hope of many people is that we will have a vaccine, hopefully several, by the end of this year,” Pascal Soriot, head of AstraZeneca, was quoted in the report as saying. He, however, said “we are running against time".

 

The report also highlighted the warnings from experts saying the challenges could be "daunting" as the estimates show that about 15 million doses would be required to stop the pandemic.

 

According to the report, Soriot said that one of the challenges in coming up with a vaccine was declining transmission rates as it will be difficult "to properly conduct clinical vaccine trials in a natural setting".

 

According to the report, more than 100 labs across the world are working to develop a vaccine against the deadly virus. Of these, ten have made it to the clinical trial stage.

 

The deadly virus has killed over 358,000 people and infected more than five million worldwide so far.

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