Pfizer vaccine’s trial success may boost acceptance, says Fauci
The success of Pfizer Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine trial could prompt more people to get inoculated amid a surge in new cases, Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious-disease doctor, has said. Pfizer’s vaccine, developed in tie-up with Germany’s BioNTech, has “an extraordinarily high degree of efficacy — more than 90%, close to 95%," Fauci said. That could be a key factor in overcoming reluctance to take Covid vaccines that are being developed.
“What I would hope is that even though there’s a degree of skepticism about vaccines in general, that when the general public sees how effective this vaccine is," Bloomberg quoted Fauci. "We might see a turnaround of the attitude toward vaccination."
The US could start vaccinating its priority groups as early as December, Fauci said. US purchased and funded development of doses from Pfizer and other drugmakers with a goal of making enough supplies for most Americans by year-end. US recently reported 1,90,000 cases in a day.
The name of the Trump administration’s effort, Operation Warp Speed, may have created an impression that compromises are being made to create a vaccine, undermining public confidence, researchers including Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, have said.
Just over half of U.S. adults said in September they would definitely or probably take a vaccine to prevent Covid-19 if it were available, down from 72% in May, a national survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed, said Bloomberg.
Results of a late-stage trial of a vaccine candidate from Moderna Inc. that uses the same messenger RNA technology as the Pfizer shot are likely to be available within a week, Fauci said. “And if that is really comparable to what we saw with the Pfizer trial, we’ll now have two highly effective vaccines."