Canada’s health regulator on Wednesday approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, making it the third country to authorize the use of the shot – as the green-lighting of the vaccine in the US is still at least another day away.
How could scientists race out COVID-19 vaccines so fast without cutting corners? A head start helped -- over a decade of behind-the-scenes research that had new vaccine technology poised for a challenge just as the coronavirus erupted.
WASHINGTON — The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech provides strong protection against Covid-19 within about 10 days of the first dose, according to documents published on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration before a meeting of its vaccine advisory group.
The finding is one of several significant new results featured in the briefing materials, which include more than 100 pages of data analyses from the agency and from Pfizer. Last month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of 95 percent after two doses administered three weeks apart. The new analyses show that the protection starts kicking in far earlier.
In early September, officials in South Korea announced an ambitious plan to vaccinate 30 million people against the flu — 10 million more than last year, an increase aimed at keeping down rates of the flu while the country battled the coronavirus.
But as The Times reported last week, the internet soon got in the way. As the vaccine was distributed, a few logistical problems popped up, and South Koreans began circulating grave stories online — pictures of vaccine boxes that looked like they had been stored unsafely, reports of vaccine contaminated with mysterious white particles.
Trump administration officials passed when Pfizer offered in late summer to sell the U.S. government additional doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, according to people familiar with the matter. Now Pfizer may not be able provide more of its vaccine to the United States until next June because of its commitments to other countries, they said.
As the administration scrambles to try to purchase more doses of the vaccine, President Trump plans on Tuesday to sign an executive order “to ensure that United States government prioritizes getting the vaccine to American citizens before sending it to other nations,” according to a draft statement and a White House official, though it was not immediately clear what force the president’s executive order would carry.
That included whether it would expand the U.S. supply of doses beyond what is spelled out in existing federal contracts.
NEW DELHI (AP) — At least one person has died and 200 others have been hospitalized due to an unidentified illness in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, reports said Monday.
A blood test has been developed that can predict whether Covid patients will need intensive care – or are even likely to survive – shortly after they develop symptoms.
On the heels of last month’s news of stunning results from Pfizer’s and Moderna’s experimental Covid-19 vaccines, Senator Rand Paul tweeted a provocative comparison.
The new vaccines were 90 percent and 94.5 percent effective, Mr. Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said. But “naturally acquired” Covid-19 was even better, at 99.9982 percent effective, he claimed.
Mr. Paul is one of many people who, weary of lockdowns and economic losses, have extolled the benefits of contracting the coronavirus. The senator was diagnosed with the disease this year and has argued that surviving a bout of Covid-19 confers greater protection than getting vaccinated.
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