Covid-19 Vaccine Developed By Pfizer-BioNTech Offers 90 Per Cent Protection Against Coronavirus Infection

The mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech has shown that it can prevent a Covid-19 infection in 90 per cent of the cases, reports BBC.

The trials of this vaccine were conducted on 43,500 people in six countries without any safety issues. The report adds that a preliminary analysis has found that this vaccine can prevent over 90 per cent of the people from contracting Covid-19.

This vaccine involves injecting part of the SARS-Cov-2 virus's RNA into the human body, which in-turn prompts the human body to produce the Coronavirus spike protein. The immune system is then prompted to produce antibodies and activate T-cells to destroy the infected cells.

Thus subsequently if the human encounters Covid-19 the antibodies and T-cells are triggered to fight it.

The patients will require two doses of the vaccine with a gap of three weeks. During the tests it was found that 90 per cent protection was achieved 7 days after injection of the second dose.

Pfizer has expressed confidence that it will be able to supply 50 million doses of the vaccine by year end and 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.

In July BioNTech SE and Pfizer had announced encouraging initial data from their Phase I/II clinical trial of Covid-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b1, being conducted in Germany. The open-label, non-randomised, non-placebo-controlled, dose-escalation trial is part of the companies’ global mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine programme.

BNT162b1 is a lipid nanoparticle formulated, nucleoside-modified messenger RNA encoding a SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) antigen.

Preliminary results from the trial included findings from a total of 60 healthy adults aged 18 to 55. Of the 60 participants, 12 subjects each received 1µg, 10µg, 30µg or 50µg of BNT162b1 on day one and day 22. The remaining 12 participants were administered with a single injection of 60µg.

BNT162b1 was found to have induced high, dose-dependent SARS-CoV-2-neutralising titers and RBD-binding IgG concentrations following the second dose. Furthermore, the product for the first time demonstrated a concurrent stimulation of high level CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses against the SARS-CoV-2 RBD