Washington, November 18: American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc, in a joint statement issued with German drugmaker BioNTech, announced that their vaccine against COVID-19 was found to be 95 percent effective in the final analysis. The developers are now hopeful of receiving the Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) from the US drug regulator "within days". Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine 94.5% Effective in Phase 3 Trials, Likely to Receive Emergency Use Approval From US FDA.

The updated efficacy rate was issued a couple of days after Pfizer had delighted the scientific community, and the world at large, by announcing that their vaccine is "90 percent effective", based on the preliminary study of phase 3 trial data.

On Monday, rival Moderna Inc had announced a 94.5 percent efficacy rate of the mRNA-based vaccine which it is developing in the United States. The twin announcements - by Pfizer and Moderna - makes expert believe that the countdown towards the end of pandemic has begun.

In the joint statement issued by Pfizer and BioNtech today, it was announced that their candidate has reached the requirement to be granted emergency use authorisation at the earliest. A request to this effect would be submitted before the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within days, they said.

Statement Issued by Pfizer

“The study results mark an important step in this historic eight-month journey to bring forward a vaccine capable of helping to end this devastating pandemic. We continue to move at the speed of science to compile all the data collected thus far and share with regulators around the world,” said Dr Albert Bourla, Pfizer Chairman and CEO.

“With hundreds of thousands of people around the globe infected every day, we urgently need to get a safe and effective vaccine to the world," Bourla added.

Ugur Sahin, MD, CEO and Co-founder of BioNTech, also expressed delight over the high rate of efficacy of their vaccine candidate. "Our objective from the very beginning was to design and develop a vaccine that would generate rapid and potent protection against COVID-19 with a benign tolerability profile across all ages," he said.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 18, 2020 05:47 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).