Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their coronavirus vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 among those without evidence of prior infection.
The final vaccine efficacy percentage may vary, however, as safety and additional data continue to be collected.
The companies plan to submit for emergency use authorization to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration soon after they have two months of data, which is currently on track for the third week of November.
Based on current projections, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020, and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
The company reportedly plans to load suitcase-sized boxes from distribution sites in Kalamzoo, Michigan, and Puurs, Belgium, onto as many as two dozen trucks per day, allowing for the daily transit of roughly 7.6 million doses to nearby airports.
It’s a record-breaking time frame for a process that normally takes about a decade for an effective and safe vaccine. The fastest-ever vaccine development, mumps, took more than four years and was licensed in 1967.
