Pfizer Covid vaccine delivery could start before Christmas

New Delhi, Nov 19: With Global drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine showing 95 per cent efficacy in their final-stage trials, hopes have emerged that the vaccine deliveries could start before Christmas.

"If all goes well I could imagine that we gain approval in the second half of December and start deliveries before Christmas, but really only if all goes positively," BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin told Reuters.

The statement comes hours after the drugmaker Pfizer said that their coronavirus vaccine candidate has shown 95 per cent efficacy in the late-stage trial.

American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said they have concluded phase 3 study of their mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate BNT162b2, meeting all primary efficacy endpoints.

Based on current projections, the companies expect to produce globally up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.

On Monday, leading biotechnology company Moderna said its COVID-19 vaccine had shown to be 94.5 per cent effective.

Virus wave must be fought without vaccines: WHO

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization's has warned that vaccines would not arrive in time to defeat the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to AP, the WHO's Michael Ryan said vaccines should not be seen as a "unicorn" magic solution -- and countries battling a resurgence of the virus would once again have to "climb this mountain" without them.

Despite recent promising announcements from final-phase candidate vaccine trials, "We're not there with vaccines yet," said Ryan.

"Many countries are going through this wave, and they're going to go through this wave, and continue through this wave, without vaccines. We need to understand and internalise that, and realise: we have got to climb this mountain this time, without vaccines," AFP quoted Ryan as saying.