Malta will start receiving a new COVID-19 vaccine 'within days' of its release,' Health Minister Chris Fearne has said.
Pfizer announced on Monday that its advanced clinical trials of a vaccine had yielded a success rate of more than 90 per cent.
The European Union said it is very close to signing a contract with Pfizer and BioNTech for 300 million doses of the vaccine.
Fearne said the development was “good news” but he expressed some caution.
There are still some tests to be carried out to confirm the vaccine is totally safe and effective and with no side effects, he said.
He confirmed that Pfizer was one of the companies the EU was dealing with and
said the vaccine will be available in Malta “within days” of its release on the market, with priority given to the vulnerable and frontline health workers.
However, the minister would not be drawn into saying when the vaccine would
be available for the entire population, saying that negotiations were still ongoing.
Virologist Chris Barbara said he was “very optimistic and happy” about the latest results of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, although he remained cautious as
trials are ongoing.
Chris Barbara, who is clinical chairman of the Pathology Department in Mater
Dei Hospital, has a meeting scheduled with Pfizer in the coming days to ask “a
whole list of questions” on the development of the vaccine, including when the
Phase 3 trials will be concluded.
“In real terms, this means the vaccine is managing to elicit immunity – and we
know that the way the immune system reacts to COVID-19 is quite complex,
with multiple pathways,” Barbara said.
“We were not sure how the virus would react, but today’s results are even more promising.”
The reaction was echoed by consultant paediatrician Victor Grech, who said it
was “about time we had some good news in such a dismal year”.
Across much of the globe, COVID-19 infections rates are soaring to record highs, with hospital intensive care units filling up and death tolls mounting.
In Malta, 7,423 cases have been recorded in the last eight months and 81
people have died with the virus so far.
Difficult days ahead
Fearne has warned of difficult days ahead with a significant increase in the
number of cases.
Around a dozen vaccines are in the final stages of testing worldwide but the Pfizer and BioNTech candidate was the first to show results, which have yet to be peer-reviewed.
The Phase 3 clinical trial – the final stage – of the new vaccine BNT162b2, began in last July and has enrolled 43,538 participants to date, 90 per cent of whom have received a second dose of the vaccine candidate
as of November 8.
Based on supply projections, the companies said they expected to supply up to
50 million doses globally in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion in 2021. US biotech firm Moderna, several state-run Chinese labs, and a European project led by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca are thought to be closing in on potentially viable vaccines.