Pfizer covid-19 vaccine: Is it the breakthrough we've been hoping for?

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech say their coronavirus vaccine is 90 per cent effective in phase III trials. How excited should we be about the news, and what questions remain unanswered?

Health



9 November 2020

New Scientist Default Image

A health worker in Turkey holds a syringe during the phase III trial of the coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by Pfizer and BioNTech

Photo by Dogukan Keskinkilic/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

US drug maker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have today released some positive-looking results from a clinical trial of their experimental covid-19 vaccine BNT162b2.

The headline figure is “90 per cent effective”. But that may not be quite as good news as it first appears.

What did Pfizer and BioNTech find?

The results are from a phase III clinical trial, the final stage of testing whether a …

source: newscientist.com