While the Danish authorities kill millions of mink to ensure the development of vaccines against mutated coronavirus, the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer on Monday published promising test results.
The results are preliminary, but the company’s temporary analysis shows an efficiency of 90 percent. in terms of preventing people from getting covid-19.
Lars Østergaard, professor and chief physician at Aarhus University Hospital, is pleased with the result, which he believes is immediately credible. But he stresses that it is a preliminary look into an experiment that is not definitively complete.
»Already now it can be said that the effectiveness of a vaccine of 90 percent. is quite nice, ”he says.
Pfizer began its Phase 3 study on July 27 with 43,538 participants, and the status on November 8 is that 38,955 received the second dose. About half have been injected with the vaccine – while the other half have received placebo in the form of saline.
Efficacy status is done after 94 of the subjects have developed covid-19. The final conclusion on the vaccine’s effectiveness comes when 164 people have developed the disease, Pfizer said in a press release.
In a press release, Pfizer CEO Albert Burla called Monday “a great day for science and humanity.”
To the news media Bloomberg, the CEO of the German BioNTech, with which the vaccine is made, calls the result “extraordinary” in light of an expected efficiency of between 60 and 70 percent.
According to Lars Østergaard, however, there are still unanswered questions about the vaccine.
»For example, how long the vaccine works. Whether one can be infected later. Is there a difference in the effect depending on gender, age and ethnicity? So I am anxiously awaiting that data, “he says.
