The unchecked spread of the virus threatens to make the coming weeks and months particularly dangerous for the nation, which still has little semblance of a coherent federal strategy to stem the tide of infections. Even after a vaccine is approved, they said, people will need to wear masks and social distance for some time - in part because the vaccine doses will be limited, and it will take time to immunize enough of the population to stop the virus from spreading.Īs if to underscore the difficult days ahead, the United States on Monday hit the latest grim milestone in the pandemic, surpassing 10 million confirmed cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, along with more than 238,000 deaths. “We could have a rollout in December.”Įven with the welcome development, experts warned that the longed-for return to normalcy will take many months or more, and that the path is certain to contain unexpected twists and turns. “It’s stunning,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, one of several scientists who said they were heartened by the results, which far exceeded the Food and Drug Administration’s standard that a vaccine be more than 50 percent effective at protecting people compared with a placebo saline shot.
It augurs well for other vaccines and could accelerate the timetable for reining in the pandemic, said scientists, who cautioned that any successful vaccine will still face obstacles, notably distribution to hundreds of millions of people. The findings, announced by drug giant Pfizer and German biotechnology firm BioNTech, provided much-needed hope for a nation battered by surging virus cases, a stumbling economy and a bitterly fought presidential campaign. The news Monday that Pfizer’s experimental coronavirus vaccine is more than 90 percent effective sharply increased prospects that federal regulators will authorize the vaccine on an emergency basis as early as mid-December, and that the first shots will be administered before the end of the year or early next year.
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