Category Archives: Pfizer

Questions hang over UK’s rollout of Oxford/AstraZeneca jab

Posted on by

Analysis: regulator surprises by approving 12-week gap between first and second shots of vaccine as well as Pfizer/BioNTech shot

It’s a pragmatic solution to an incredibly urgent problem – how to immunise very large numbers of people at risk from a rampaging variant of Covid-19 in the shortest possible time. The answer that government advisers have come up with is to give them all – more than 20 million of them – a single shot of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine so that they have some protection and postpone the second dose to three months afterwards, when hopefully there will be plenty of vaccine available for boosters.

Related: How well does the Oxford vaccine work? What we know so far

Continue reading...

Belgian minister tweets EU’s Covid vaccine price list to anger of manufacturers

Posted on by

Pharmaceutical companies complain of breach of confidentiality after amount EU has agreed to pay for leading vaccines goes public

A Belgian minister has blown the lid off a sensitive and commercial secret – the price that the EU has agreed to pay for the leading Covid vaccines.

Belgium’s budget state secretary, Eva De Bleeker, posted the price list on Twitter, with the amounts of each vaccine that her country intends to buy from the EU. The tweet was quickly deleted, but not soon enough to prevent interested parties taking screenshots, which have now made it public knowledge.

Continue reading...

Bolsonaro branded ‘homicidally negligent’ over Brazil’s vaccine planning

Posted on by

President accused of ignoring China-produced Covid vaccine because of political expediency

Jair Bolsonaro is facing a furious backlash over what critics are calling his “homicidally negligent” failure to prepare a coherent coronavirus vaccination programme as Brazil’s death toll again soars.

More than 181,000 Brazilians have died from the disease the president calls “a little flu”, with Latin America’s biggest economy now careering into a painful second wave.

Continue reading...

Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine approved by panel clearing way for FDA authorization for emergency use – live updates

Posted on by

The Trump administration, which had arranged five federal executions before the president leaves office, plans to kill Brandon Bernard – a 40-year-old man that activists say was wrongfully convicted.

Berard was 18 at the time of the crime he as been convicted fo occured.

The planned killing of #BrandonBernard tonight is a national disgrace. https://t.co/vA6bbG9h0R

Related: Justice department plans to execute five inmates before Biden's inauguration

Matthew Cantor reports:

Each election season as campaigns ramp up get-out-the-vote efforts, socially awkward Americans face a dilemma: is it possible to help salvage democracy without having to cold-call anyone?

Related: Letter-writers look to get out the vote in Georgia – with a personal touch

Continue reading...

Trump administration refused offer to buy millions more Pfizer vaccine doses

Posted on by

Decision could delay the delivery of a second batch until the manufacturer meets its orders for other countries

The Trump administration passed up a chance last summer to buy millions of additional doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, a decision that could delay the delivery of a second batch of doses until the manufacturer fulfills other international contracts.

The revelation, first reported by the New York Times and confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday, came a day before Donald Trump aimed to take credit for the speedy development of forthcoming vaccines at a White House summit.

Continue reading...

UK trial to mix and match Covid vaccines to try to improve potency

Posted on by

Pilot planned for January will give subjects a shot of both Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech versions

A trial is likely to go ahead in January to find out whether mixing and matching Covid vaccines gives better protection than two doses of the same one, the head of the British government’s taskforce has said.

The Pfizer/BioNTech Covid jab is an mRNA vaccine. Essentially, mRNA is a molecule used by living cells to turn the gene sequences in DNA into the proteins that are the building blocks of all their fundamental structures. A segment of DNA gets copied (“transcribed”) into a piece of mRNA, which in turn gets “read” by the cell’s tools for synthesising proteins.

Continue reading...

Covid vaccine arrives in UK hospitals ready for first jabs

Posted on by

Medical director warns of great hurdles in largest vaccination campaign in UK history

Batches of the Covid vaccine have begun to arrive in hospitals around the UK, ready for the first jabs on Tuesday in what NHS England’s medical director warned would be the largest and most complex vaccination campaign in the country’s history.

The UK’s record-breaking approval of the vaccine and the rapid start of immunisation against Covid-19 did not mean the end of the pandemic was in sight, said Prof Stephen Powis. It would be a marathon and not a sprint, he said.

Continue reading...

The vaccine miracle: how scientists waged the battle against Covid-19

Posted on by

We trace the extraordinary research effort, from the discovery of the virus’s structure to the start of inoculations this week

In the early afternoon of 3 January this year, a small metal box was delivered to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre addressed to virus expert Prof Zhang Yongzhen. Inside, packed in dry ice, were swabs from a patient who was suffering from a novel, occasionally fatal respiratory illness that was sweeping the city of Wuhan. Exactly what was causing terrifying rises in case numbers, medical authorities wanted to know? And how was the disease being spread?

Related: ‘I worked so hard in the lab. I cried when the news came’

Continue reading...

‘Day to remember in a year to forget’: Hancock says first 800,000 doses of vaccine tested – video

Posted on by

Matt Hancock has reiterated that the UK is the first country in the world to have a clinically approved coronavirus vaccine for supply, and the government was prepared for it to be 'ready to go' once approval came through.

Batch testing has been completed for the first 800,000 doses of the vaccine that will be available for the whole of the UK, Hancock said. Britain has ordered stocks of seven different vaccines, comprising 350m doses in total. The NHS will start vaccinating from 'early next week'

Continue reading...

No corners have been cut in Pfizer vaccine approval, says UK regulator chief – video

Posted on by

People should be confident in the safety of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine, the chief executive of the UK regulator said. Dr June Raine, head of the Medical and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), said the vaccine had been subjected to rigorous testing and had met strict standards of safety and quality

Continue reading...

A vaccine revolution | podcast

Posted on by

Results from clinical trials have shown that the world has three apparently highly effective vaccines for Covid-19. With the race now on for regulatory approval, production and distribution, is the end of the pandemic within reach?

After a gruelling year of successive waves of Covid-19 infections and national lockdowns there has been a burst of good news this month, with three separate vaccine candidates performing extremely well in clinical trials.

First, Pfizer and Moderna announced that their vaccines were testing at an efficacy of around 95%. Then came the news that the AstraZeneca vaccine (the one pre-ordered in bulk by the UK government) was hitting 90%. It marks not just a new phase in the Covid-19 pandemic but potentially a revolution in vaccine technology itself.

Continue reading...

Trump accuses Pfizer of delaying vaccine announcement until after election – video

Posted on by

Donald Trump reiterated on Friday the false claim that he won the election and accused pharmaceutical companies of strategically delaying their announcements about a coronavirus vaccine because of his support for reducing medicine costs and in order to hurt his re-election efforts. 'We had big pharma against us,' Trump said at a news conference during which he accused Pfizer of waiting over a month to announce details about its coronavirus vaccine test results.

Continue reading...

Moderna vaccine’s effectiveness bodes well for Oxford/AstraZeneca jab

Posted on by

Phase 3 success rate of 95% for US firm’s treatment is promising for UK vaccine trial

Hopes are rising for the Covid jab being developed by Oxford University, after Moderna became the second company to reveal impressive results from its vaccine trials.

Interim results from phase 3 clinical trials of the Covid vaccine from US company Moderna has revealed it to be almost 95% effective at preventing the disease. The news followed an announcement last week from Germany-based Pfizer and BioNTech that their vaccine was more than 90% effective.

Continue reading...

Is the vaccine safe? Do I need it if I’ve had Covid? Readers’ questions answered

Posted on by

‘Zero chance’ mRNA can alter genes, says expert, adding that vaccine can ‘top up’ immune response from infection

“The concerted efforts put into developing a vaccine are wonderful but they can’t possibly know about long-term adverse effects. I’ll have it if it’s offered to me, and at my age long-term effects are irrelevant. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be a latter-day thalidomide.” Jenny Walters, retired teacher, Ashburton

Continue reading...

Scientist behind BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine says it can end pandemic

Posted on by

Exclusive: BioNTech’s CEO Uğur Şahin says he is confident vaccine can ‘bash the virus over the head’

The scientist behind the first Covid-19 vaccine to clear interim clinical trials says he is confident his product can “bash the virus over the head” and put an end to the pandemic that has held the world hostage in 2020.

The German company BioNTech and the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced via a press release on Monday that their jointly developed vaccine candidate had outperformed expectations in the crucial phase 3 trials, proving 90% effective in stopping people from falling ill.

Continue reading...

Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine poses global logistics challenge

Posted on by

Europe and US create vast facilities for Covid-19 vaccine but poorer nations lack infrastructure, say experts

Two vast football-pitch-sized facilities equipped with hundreds of large freezers in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Puurs, Belgium, will be the centres of the huge effort to ship the coronavirus vaccine, developed by US drug giant Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech, around the world.

Governments are scrambling to prepare for the rollout of the vaccine, which must be stored at -70C (-94F), after the announcement from the two companies that it was more than 90% effective and had no serious side-effects. The news sparked hopes of a return to normal life and a stock market rally, but now minds are turning to the practicalities of getting the vaccine quickly to populations across the world, in particular to the vulnerable people who need it most.

Continue reading...

6 key questions about the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine

Posted on by

There are grounds for optimism but also several unknowns around this coronavirus vaccine

Hopes that the end of the coronavirus pandemic has become nearer have soared after the news that a coronavirus vaccine was found to be 90% effective in global trials.

Although there is definite reason to be optimistic, experts have cautioned that the data from the trials conducted by Pfizer and BioNTech are not final, and there remain plenty of unknowns.

Continue reading...

Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine announcement is cause for cautious celebration

Posted on by

Interim trial results are encouraging as scientists welcome news

It is not yet the end of the pandemic, but the announcement by Pfizer/BioNTech that their vaccine has been 90% successful in the vital large-scale trials has got even the soberest of scientists excited.

These are interim results and the trial will continue into December to collect more data. The two companies – a tiny German biotech with the big idea and the giant pharma company Pfizer with the means to develop it – have not yet published their detailed data, so it is all on trust. And yet, nobody is suggesting the results have been over-egged. It looks as though the vaccine not only works, but works better than anyone hoped.

Continue reading...