Pfizer’s covid-19 candidate: All you need to know apart from its effectiveness

Pfizer Inc announced on Monday that its trial Covid immunization, in a joint association with German biotech firm BioNTech, is more than 90% effective in forestalling the Covid-19 disease. While it very well may be a significant discovery in the battle against the catastrophic Covid-19 outbreak, Pfizer’s vaccine would not be accessible in the drug stores for the overall population any time soon.

The clinical preliminary information of vaccine candidate BNT162B2 looked promising. However, Pfizer and BioNTech’s reports doesn’t throw much light on safety. The safety data of the vaccine could be released by the month end. Subsequently, regulatory body FDA and ethics committee ought to give a nod before exporting them across the world.

Pfizer and BioNTech is now awaiting emergency-use approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. If permitted, it is likely that 50 million doses would be launched this year, enough to safeguard 25 million people, and then upscale the bulk production to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

While all seems well, the main challenge is, Pfizer’s unique technology that uses synthetic mRNA requires incredibly cold storage requirements. It must be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius (-94 F) or below. Many hospitals do not have that facility, which became a hurdle.

Experts demanded complete safety profile as the firm enclosed only early encouraging results. On top of that the distribution to rural areas may not be possible in the early stages.