LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Pfizer Inc. said Monday that its COVID-19 vaccine may be 90% effective, based on early and complete test results.
Pfizer, which is developed the vaccine with its German partner BioNTech, now is one track to apply later this month for emergency-use approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, once it has the necessary safety information in hand.
“We will begin to see doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists and the most vulnerable among us receive injections, and I think that will start in December,” said Dr. Jon Klein, the Vice Dean for Research at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Dr. Klein shared a picture of his sleeve rolled up with a needle in his arm last month, when he got his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“This is history,” he said. “I need to show people that we really did this.”
He said his arm was sore after getting vaccine, and there were some muscle and joint aches after the second dose. He said the symptoms were gone within 24 hours.
“Among my friends who volunteered, half of us had sore arms and half of us didn’t so we began to think, well maybe we were in the group that got the vaccine if we had a sore arm,” he explained.
Dr. Klein said he felt called as a physician to participate in the trial, but it quickly became more personal.
“After I committed to being in the trial, a coworker of mine at the hospital died. He was in his 50s. I want to see this suffering stop.”
Pfizer has found the vaccine to be more than 90% effective. Of the nearly 43,538 people who were a part of the trial, Pfizer said only 94 of them tested positive for COVID-19, but results may change at the end of the trial.
Dr Klein said there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered.
“We have to know if it prevents severe disease, we have to know if it prevents transmission by asymptomatic carriers, we have to find out how long the immunity will last,” he said.
Pfizer expects to produce up to 50-million vaccine doses before the end of 2020.
“I've been thinking of the old Winston Churchill quote, ‘this is not the end, it's not the beginning of the end, perhaps it's the end of the beginning’... I think this is it,” Dr. Klein said.
While the world waits, he still encourages people to wear their masks and social distance.
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