As the epidemic continues in the U.S. and the public yearns for a vaccine to arrive as soon as possible, two major U.S. vaccine developers have indicated that bringing a vaccine to market may be delayed until late this year and into the spring of next year.
The U.S. is currently an epidemic-prone nation. As of Oct. 2, Johns Hopkins University published a dynamic country-specific outbreak report showing 7.16 million confirmed infections in the U.S. and more than 200,000 deaths in the U.S. as a result of the outbreak. The news that President Trump and his wife and Secretary Hicks have been diagnosed with the virus has increased the need for a vaccine.
Pfizer’s chief executive Albert Bourla said his company will stick to science in its vaccine trials and will not shorten the development process because of political pressure.
In a statement posted on his company’s Web site Thursday (Oct. 1), Bourla said, “In this year of hyper-partisanship, there are those who want us to move more quickly and those who want us to delay. Both of these demands are unacceptable to me.”
Burra said, “We are moving at the speed of science. We will never succumb to political pressure. The only heavy pressure we feel is the billions of people (around the world), and the millions of businesses, the thousands of government officials who depend on us.”
Burra said he hopes Pfizer may be able to produce one million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year.
It was previously reported that Pfizer would have definitive data on the vaccine’s effectiveness as soon as the end of October to submit the vaccine approval documents to the FDA.
Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna Biotech, another major U.S. vaccine developer, said recently that the company is unlikely to bring a vaccine to market this year, or at the earliest next spring.
Bancel told a medical conference on Wednesday that Modena would not be able to submit approval documents to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for public use of the company’s vaccine until at least the end of January next year.
The Financial Times quoted Bansel as saying that “based on what we know about our vaccine,” a reasonable timeline for approval submission would be around the end of the first quarter or early second quarter.
Modena had said earlier this month that it could ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve the vaccine through an emergency approval process as early as Nov. 1.
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