The pharmaceutical company Pfizer said Wednesday that its coronavirus vaccine is 95% effective and caused no serious side effects as it plans to seek federal approval for the vaccine’s emergency use.
Pfizer disclosed the results after a final analysis of the vaccine’s Phase 3 trial, which also revealed it protects older people most at risk of dying from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The American pharmaceutical giant’s announcement came a week after it first revealed promising preliminary findings, and days before it plans to formally ask the federal government to approve the vaccine for emergency use.
Pfizer has not yet released detailed information about the trial and the results have not been scrutinized by independent experts.
Pfizer and BioNTech, a German biotechnology company that partnered with Pfizer on the vaccine’s development, said they plan to produce up to 50 million doses worldwide this year and up to 1.3 billion in 2021.
Pfizer also said it would submit the results of the trial to other regulatory agencies around the world.
The biotechnology company Moderna, Inc., said earlier this week that an interim analysis of its late-stage study revealed its experimental vaccine appears to be 94.5% effective.
The U.S. government has said it hopes Moderna and Pfizer will produce some 20 million doses for distribution in December, with the first doses offered to vulnerable people like health care workers and those with serious health conditions.
