The German-American consortium Pfizer/BioNTech said today that its vaccine remains effective against Covid-19 for up to six months after the second dose, citing results from clinical trials conducted in South Africa.
Among the 46.307 participants in trials carried out in several countries during the third phase of testing, the vaccine showed an efficacy of 91,3%, according to a statement released by the pharmaceutical companies.
Of the 927 symptomatic cases of Covid-19 detected as of March 13 in the study, 850 were in the placebo group and 77 cases were among vaccinated people.
In South Africa, no cases of infection were seen among those vaccinated during the third-phase trial, which looked at participants for up to six months after the second dose, according to the statement made public.
In the country “800 participants were recruited and nine cases of Covid-19 were observed, all in the placebo group, indicating 100% of vaccine efficacy”, emphasizes the Pfizer/BioNTech consortium.
These are "the first clinical results to demonstrate that a vaccine can effectively protect against the variants currently in circulation, an essential fact to achieve group immunity and put an end to this pandemic in the world population", stressed, in the same note, the director BioNTech executive and co-founder, Ugur Sahin.
Pfizer and BioNTech had predicted in January, based on 'in vitro' tests, that even though it was “inferior” to the response seen against the common strain of the virus, “the high efficacy” against the South African variant did not appear to be affected.
Clinical trial data support these results, underlines the statement released today.
Pfizer and BioNTech plan to manufacture by 2021 up to 2,5 billion doses of their vaccine, one of three approved in the European Union.
The vaccine is authorized from 16 years of age. This week, the manufacturing companies stressed that the vaccine is safe and very protective in children from 12 years old, based on a study carried out with 2.260 American volunteers.
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