International markets are rallying on the news pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is developing a Covid-19 vaccine in collaboration with German BionTech reported to be 90% effective in combating the virus.
According to the story from Protothema, S&P futures rose 3%, the Dow futures recorded a rise of 1,400 points at the opening, while the US dollar had a slight fall, with the euro/dollar exchange rate approaching 1.1. Commodity prices, such as oil, are also rising.
Pfizer’s spokespersons are talking about “a great day for science and humanity” having announced that they would apply for approval of the use of the vaccine by the end of November.
Germany’s BioNTech and its US pharma partner Pfizer announced on Monday that their vaccine candidate is more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in a trial of over 43,000 participants. Dr Albert Bourla, chairman and CEO of Pfizer offered this in a statement:
“Today is a great day for science and humanity. The first set of results from our Phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trial provides the initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent Covid-19.”
According to current projections from the company, there will be 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021. The Phase 3 clinical trial of BNT162b2 began on July 27 and has enrolled 43,538 participants to date, 38,955 of whom have received a second dose of the vaccine candidate as of November 8, 2020.
The Trump administration claimed that the vaccine research was funded by Operation Warp Speed, but this proved to be false since it was the German government that funded the development of the vaccine.
As of yesterday, there were more than 480,000 new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide. The most new cases for one day, some 111,433 in the US, highlights the staggering toll the pandemic has leveled on society.