Moderna and Pfizer Begin Late-Stage Coronavirus Vaccine Trials

A second company, Pfizer, announced late Monday afternoon that it would also begin a late-stage study of a coronavirus vaccine, on Tuesday. Pfizer has been working with a German company, BioNTech. Their study will also include 30,000 people, from 39 states in the United States, and from Brazil, Argentina and Germany.

The government announced last week that it had reached a $1.95 billion deal to buy 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine by the year’s end, but only if the trial proves it safe and effective.

Dr. Fauci estimated that the full enrollment of 30,000 people in the Moderna trial would be completed by the end of the summer, and that results might be available by November. Findings might emerge even earlier, he said, but added that he doubted it. He said that the high rates of transmission in some parts of the country, though unfortunate, would help speed up the process of determining whether the vaccine works.

Dr. Mark Mulligan, director of the NYU Langone Vaccine Center in New York, which will begin giving injections of the Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday, said he thought that full enrollment would take two months, and that it would take four to six months to determine whether the vaccine worked.

Overall, a total of 150 to 160 coronavirus infections in the study will be enough to determine whether the Moderna vaccine is acceptably effective — that is, if it protects 60 percent of those who receive it, Dr. Fauci said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/health/moderna-vaccine-covid.html