'Great day for humanity': Pfizer says COVID-19 vaccine over 90% effective

(Reuters) - Pfizer Inc PFE.N said on Monday its experimental COVID-19 vaccine was more than 90% effective, a major victory in the fight against a pandemic that has killed more than a million people, battered the world's economy and upended daily life.

Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE BNTX.O are the first drugmakers to release successful data from a large-scale clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine. The companies said they have so far found no serious safety concerns and expect to seek U.S. authorization this month for emergency use of the vaccine.

Health experts said Pfizer’s results were positive for all COVID-19 vaccines currently in development since they show the shots are going after the right target and are a proof of concept that the disease can be halted with vaccination.

“Today is a great day for science and humanity,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, said.

“We are reaching this critical milestone in our vaccine development program at a time when the world needs it most with infection rates setting new records, hospitals nearing over-capacity and economies struggling to reopen.”

If Pfizer’s vaccine is authorized, the number of doses will initially be limited and many questions remain, including how long the vaccine will provide protection.

BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin told Reuters he was optimistic the immunisation effect of the vaccine would last for a year although that was not certain yet.

“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,” said Peter Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the University of Oxford.

MARKETS SURGE

The prospect of a vaccine electrified world markets with S&P 500 futures hitting a record high and tourism and travel shares surging. Shares of companies that have benefited from pandemic-related lockdowns dropped including conferencing platform Zoom Video Communications ZM.O which was down 12% in premarket trading.

Pfizer shares were indicated 14.2% higher in pre-market trading in New York, while BioNTech’s stock was up nearly 23% in Frankfurt.

“Light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s just hope the vaccine deniers won’t get in the way, but 2021 just got a lot brighter,” said Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com

Shares of other vaccine developers in the final stage of testing also rose with Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N up 4% in pre-market trading and Moderna MRNA.O 7.4% stronger. Britain's AstraZeneca AZN.L was down 0.5%.

“The efficacy data are really impressive. This is better than most of us anticipated,” said William Schaffner, infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee. “The study isn’t completed yet, but nonetheless the data look very solid.”

U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed the test results, and the market boost: “STOCK MARKET UP BIG, VACCINE COMING SOON. REPORT 90% EFFECTIVE. SUCH GREAT NEWS!” he said on Twitter.

'Emergency action' needed to prevent major polio, measles epidemics

Globally, millions of children are at a heightened risk of polio and measles – dangerous but preventable diseases – amid disruptions to vital immunization programs due to the coronavirus pandemic, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organization (WHO) have said.

According to the two UN agencies, immunization rates in some countries have fallen by as much as 50 percent, with people unable to access health services because of lockdown and transport disruptions, or unwillingness due to fear of contracting COVID-19.

Polio and measles vaccination campaigns, designed to fill gaps in essential services, also had to be paused to prevent possible infection of health workers and communities, while protection measures were put in place.

A child smiles while receiving a Measles and Rubella vaccination during a UNICEF-supported mobile vaccination campaign in Aden, Yemen, February 2019./AFP

"COVID-19 has had a devastating effect on health services and in particular immunization services, worldwide," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO.

"But unlike with COVID, we have the tools and knowledge to stop diseases such as polio and measles. What we need are the resources and commitments to put these tools and knowledge into action," he added. "If we do that, children's lives will be saved."

'Urgent call to action’

UNICEF and WHO estimates that about US$655 million are needed to address dangerous immunity gaps in middle-income countries, which are not eligible for Gavi assistance. Of that figure, US$400 million are needed to support polio outbreak response over 2020-2021, and US$255 million to prepare for, prevent, and respond to measles outbreaks over the next three years.

Issuing an urgent call to action, the two UN agencies warned that if left unchecked, the situation posed an "increasingly high risk of explosive outbreaks and potentially further international spread of both polio and measles."

Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of UNICEF, said that the world "cannot allow" the fight against one deadly disease – COVID-19 – to impact the fight against other diseases.

"Addressing global COVID-19 pandemic is critical. However, other deadly diseases also threaten the lives of millions of children in some of the poorest areas of the world. That is why today we are urgently calling for global action from country leaders, donors, and partners," she said.

"We need additional financial resources to safely resume vaccination campaigns and prioritize immunization systems that are critical to protect children and avert other epidemics besides COVID-19."

Respond to emerging outbreaks

WHO and UNICEF also called on countries to respond urgently to emerging disease outbreaks, prioritize immunization in national budgets and strengthen collaboration with partners for increased synergies.

They also noted that new tools, including a next-generation novel oral polio vaccine and a forthcoming Measles Outbreak Strategic Response Plan, are expected to be deployed over the coming months to help tackle these growing threats in a more effective and sustainable manner, and ultimately save lives.

Source: CGTN

Bursts of radio waves in space may be from cores of dead stars

Researchers in the U.S., Canada and China independently reached that conclusion.

Astronomers have spotted a handful of extremely intense and brief blasts of radio waves since 2007 but have yet to pin down exactly what's creating them. The blasts have fuelled all sorts of speculation about their origins, from exploding or colliding stars to alien civilizations.

Now the speculation soon may be resolved, with three teams of scientists finally finding a clear and plausible source for the puzzling pulses, known as "fast radio bursts," or FRBs. Using different telescopes, teams in the United States, Canada and China independently studied an FRB from April that originated 30,000 light-years away and lasted just a millisecond, and all three came to the same conclusion: It probably originated from a magnetar in our own galaxy.

A magnetar is the rotating core of a massive dead star with a powerful magnetic field. Magnetars are so dense that a teaspoon of one would weigh as much as 1,000 pyramids of Giza, according to Christopher Bochenek, a Caltech astronomer and lead author of the U.S.-based research. The researchers published their findings Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"This discovery makes it plausible that most fast radio bursts come from magnetars," said Bochenek. The radio burst they examined was thousands of times stronger than anything else in the Milky Way, he said.

Until now, astronomers have been struggling to explain why some FRBs aren't one-off events like supernova explosions but seem to repeat themselves instead. Magnetars could provide the answer, since they spin slowly and flare periodically, like a lighthouse beacon. They're also abundant enough both inside and outside our galaxy to be the sources of other bursts scientists have seen.

The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope is used by researchers

Bochenek and his team scoped out the FRB with a network of small radio antennas known as STARE2, which is spread out in California and Utah to help identify bursts' locations and distinguish them from radio signals produced by people on Earth. Canadian astronomers using the massive CHIME telescope in British Columbia similarly attributed the FRB to a magnetar, and a Chinese collaboration had consistent findings with its own radio telescope.

Source: abc