COVID-19 Vaccine Could Be Ready By October 2020, Says Head of Pfizer

With every passing day, COVID-19 looks like it won't go away and we will have to learn to live with this coronavirus.

And this is only making us desperately wait for a vaccine, to bring our lives back to normal. While there are some vaccines that show promise, others, haven¡¯t been so successful.

Reuters

However, now, CEO of American pharmaceutical company Pfizer has stated that we won¡¯t have to wait for long, according to a report by The Times of Israel.

Albery Bourla in an interview said, ¡°If things go well, and the stars are aligned, we will have enough evidence of safety and efficacy so that we can¡­ have a vaccine around the end of October.¡±

In case you didn¡¯t know, Pfizer is currently developing a vaccine with German pharmaceutical giant BioNTech on a number of vaccines in Europe and the US.

Reuters

Their current vaccine that goes by the name ¡®BNT162¡¯ is undergoing tests on humans after it received required clinical approvals. The company is testing four of its RNA-based vaccines to find out the most effective and safe one among the lot.

Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine

Pfizer¡¯s vaccine isn¡¯t the only one that is promised to arrive at the shelves this year. The report also revealed UK pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca¡¯s head, Pascal Soriot has stated that one or more COVID-19 vaccines could soon start rolling out by the end of 2020.

AstraZeneca has teamed up with the University of Oxford and developed a vaccine based on a weakened strain of adenovirus.

They¡¯ve combined Adenoviruses that cause common cold in chimpanzees with the genetic material of the novel coronavirus.

Reuters

However, leading the vaccine race as of now is the US-biotech company Moderna Inc. It has even cleared stage-1 of its clinical trials last week and is all set to begin phase 2 of its trials on 600 healthy individuals.

The vaccine has shown success in producing antibodies against the novel coronavirus.