Pfizer announced Monday that its experimental vaccine for coronavirus was more than 90% effective — sending stock futures soaring and vindicating a rapid research and development plan championed by President Donald Trump.
The New York Times reported:
The drug maker Pfizer announced on Monday that an early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial suggested the vaccine was robustly effective in preventing Covid-19, a promising development as the world has waited anxiously for any positive news about a pandemic that has killed more than 1.2 million people.
Pfizer, which developed the vaccine with the German drugmaker BioNTech, released only sparse details from its clinical trial, based on the first formal review of the data by an outside panel of experts.
The company said that the analysis found that the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective in preventing the disease among trial volunteers who had no evidence of prior coronavirus infection. If the results hold up, that level of protection would put it on par with highly effective childhood vaccines for diseases such as measles. No serious safety concerns have been observed, the company said.
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Pfizer plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization of the two-dose vaccine later this month, after it has collected the recommended two months of safety data. By the end of the year it will have manufactured enough doses to immunize 15 to 20 million people, company executives have said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures index rose 5% on the news.
President Donald Trump pushed the development of vaccines, and created Operation Warp Speed, a plan to accelerate vaccine production and distribution.
He was exuberant at the news:
STOCK MARKET UP BIG, VACCINE COMING SOON. REPORT 90% EFFECTIVE. SUCH GREAT NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020
The Pfizer news came six days after the 2020 presidential election. Former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), poured scorn on the president’s push for a vaccine, saying they would not trust anything he endorsed until it had been verified by independent scientists.
In the vice presidential debate in October, Harris said: “If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it.”
Several states joined in the skepticism, saying that they would develop their own separate process for reviewing the safety of any vaccine developed by the administration’s policy.
Pfizer clarified that it was not part of Operation Warp Speed and that it had not taken research money from the U.S. government.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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