Mon 14 September 2020:
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said it’s likely the US will deploy a Covid-19 vaccine to the public before the end of the year and that the company is prepared for that scenario, pushing back against more tepid expectations shared by health authorities.
Mr Bourla said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation that he’s “quite comfortable” that the vaccine the company is developing in partnership with BioNTech SE is safe and that it could be available to Americans before 2021, contingent on an approval from US regulators at the Food and Drug Administration.
“I cannot say what the FDA will do,” Mr Bourla said. “But I think it’s a likely scenario, and we are preparing for it.”
New York-based Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech are seen as frontrunners in the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine, alongside Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc.
Mr Bourla said Pfizer and its partner have a 60 per cent chance of knowing the efficacy of its still experimental vaccine by the end of October.
“Of course that doesn’t mean that it works; that means that we’ll know if it works,” Mr Bourla said.
