Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Pfizer Begins Human Trials Testing Of COVID Vaccine
Pfizer and BioNTech are starting a large study of a vaccine candidate for Covid-19 aimed at securing approvals — but it’s not the one for which results were released earlier this month. The companies always said that they planned to pick from among four different candidates, all of which use a technology called messenger RNA to produce a protein on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The vaccine is designed to lead the immune system to recognize the protein, and, it is hoped, to attack the virus. (Herper and Garde, 7/27)
The trial will include up to 30,000 participants between the ages of 18 and 85 across 120 sites globally, including 39 U.S. states, the companies announced. If successful, they expect to submit it for final regulatory review as early as October. They plan to supply up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and approximately 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021. (Lovelace Jr., 7/27)
