The Covid-19 candidate vaccine developed by the German-American alliance BioNTech and Pfizer, which has already been the subject of fruitful preliminary discussions at the European level, is showing promising results. These companies announced this on Monday 9 November, based on the first set of results from their Phase III clinical trial.
According to them, the candidate vaccine would be 90% “effective” in preventing Covid-19 infections. In this clinical trial involving 43,738 volunteers, patient protection was achieved 7 days after the second of the two doses and 28 days after the first, according to preliminary results.
MEP Peter Liese (EPP, Germany) welcomed this as “a huge success for European research policy”. The MEP points out that the BioNTech project is funded, among others, by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme, supported by the InnovFin financial instrument and the European Fund for Strategic Investments. BioNTech has also received money from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
For its part, the European Commission has entered into preliminary discussions with them with a view to signing an advance purchase agreement for a minimum of 200 million doses, to which could be added a further 100 million doses (see EUROPE 12556/7, 12592/1). “According to my information, this contract is about to be signed”, commented Peter Liese. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, confirmed this on Twitter.
For its part, the European Medicines Agency began its ongoing evaluation of the Pfizer-BioNTech data on 6 October (see EUROPE 12575/4). (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)