The coronavirus vaccine developed jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech is ‘100% effective’, the companies claimed in separate statements to the press Wednesday afternoon.
Both companies released statements Wednesday following the completion of phase three testing of the BNT162b2 vaccine on children between the ages of 12 to 15.
According to Pfizer, the trials found the anti-COVID vaccine exceed expectations in terms of efficacy, as well as exceeding the efficacy levels recorded in other age groups.
The phase three trials, which included testing on 2,260 children in the target age group, found that “in adolescents 12 to 15 years of age with or without prior evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 demonstrated 100% efficacy and robust antibody responses, exceeding those recorded earlier in vaccinated participants aged 16 to 25 years old, and was well tolerated,” Pfizer said.
“We share the urgency to expand the authorization of our vaccine to use in younger populations and are encouraged by the clinical trial data from adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15,” said Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer. “We plan to submit these data to FDA as a proposed amendment to our Emergency Use Authorization in the coming weeks and to other regulators around the world, with the hope of starting to vaccinate this age group before the start of the next school year.”
“Across the globe, we are longing for a normal life. This is especially true for our children. The initial results we have seen in the adolescent studies suggest that children are particularly well protected by vaccination, which is very encouraging given the trends we have seen in recent weeks regarding the spread of the B.1.1.7 UK variant. It is very important to enable them to get back to everyday school life and to meet friends and family while protecting them and their loved ones,” said Ugur Sahin, CEO and Co-founder of BioNTech.
The trial enrolled 2,260 adolescents 12 to 15 years of age in the United States. In the trial, 18 cases of COVID-19 were observed in the placebo group, which numbered 1,129, versus none in the vaccinated group of 1,131 children.