A Guide to Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine
The first COVID-19 vaccine to go into any American arms outside of a trial is Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, which was designed and developed by the German biotech company BioNTech. Here, we give a rundown of basic facts about the vaccine and an overview of how it works.
Quick Summary
Vaccine name: BNT162b2
Design type: mRNA
Dose number: 2, 21 days apart
Efficacy: 95% efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in adults without prior evidence of infection a week or more after receipt of the second dose.
Safety: No serious safety concerns reported. The shots, however, routinely elicit a fairly strong temporary reaction in many people that can include injection site pain, fatigue, headache and chills.
Expected dose availability: Worldwide, up to 50 million doses, or enough for approximately 25 million people, by the end of 2020, with up to 1.3 billion doses expected in 2021.
Expected timeline: First doses are slated to be administered beginning on Dec. 14 to prioritized populations, following the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization on Dec. 11.
Operation Warp Speed involvement: No support for the trials or research and development, but the U.S. government inked a $1.95
