US passes 10m cases; Italy extends restrictions in five regions; Biden announces Covid-19 advisory board
- Scientists react to vaccine news
- Covid-19 vaccine candidate is 90% effective, says manufacturer
- What has Pfizer’s vaccine trial found and is this a breakthrough?
- New Covid lockdown in Hungary as Belgium passes second peak
- Italy ‘faces 10,000 Covid deaths in a month’ with no lockdown
- Follow all our coronavirus coverage
Scientists have reacted positively to the announcement by Pfizer/BioNTech that their vaccine has been 90% successful in the vital large-scale trials:
Peter Horby, a professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health in the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, said:
This news made me smile from ear to ear. It is a relief to see such positive results on this vaccine and bodes well for Covid-19 vaccines in general. Of course we need to see more detail and await the final results, and there is a long long way to go before vaccines will start to make a real difference, but this feels to me like a watershed moment.
It is difficult to fully evaluate the interim data without more information but it appears that the vaccine is able to protect against Covid-19 disease. The big question is whether the vaccine can block virus infection and subsequent transmission.
Hello and welcome to today’s live pandemic blog.
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