90% efficacy is striking. To give some context, the US Food and Drug Administration indicated they would licence a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine with 50% efficacy. The flu vaccine often provides around 60% efficacy and the mumps vaccine, which is currently the fastest vaccine ever made at four years, provides around 88% efficacy.

The BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine could outstrip that, after just nine months of development. This level of efficacy means virus transmission could be very effectively controlled.

Currently, this trial has enrolled 43,538 volunteers, giving half the volunteers two doses of the vaccine and the other half two doses of a placebo. These volunteers then continued their normal lives, but they were monitored for any symptoms that could be COVID-19, with testing to confirm.

Analysis of 94 volunteers with confirmed COVID-19 suggests the vaccine has an efficacy of over 90%.

That has the research community excited. It bodes well for other vaccines currently being tested for SARS-CoV-2 and we could end up with multiple successful vaccines. This would be great because some might work better in certain populations, like older people.

Multiple vaccines could also be manufactured using a broad range of established infrastructure, which would accelerate vaccine distribution.

BioNTech, first in the race to produce evidence of a working COVID-19 vaccine, is planning to price the two-shot regimen below “typical market rates” and would differentiate pricing between countries or regions.

Speaking at a Financial Times online event, the German biotech firm’s strategy head Ryan Richardson said the price tag of the vaccine, which is co-developed with Pfizer and which has yet to win regulatory approval, would reflect the financial risks that its private-sector investors have incurred.

 

“We’ve tried to pursue a balanced approach that recognises that innovation requires capital and investment so we plan to price our vaccine well below typical market rates reflecting the situation that we’re in and with the goal to insure broad-based access around the world,” Richardson said at the FT event.

“I expect there to be differential pricing in certain regions of the world,” he added, declining to elaborate on the different price tags.