Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, November ten. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Great news on the vaccine front. Fiser's COVID nineteen vaccine
Speaker 1: candidate has been shown to be nine effective in early findings.
Speaker 1: The fires Are vaccine is a two shot protocol given
Speaker 1: three weeks apart. They're still waiting on more data, but
Speaker 1: could possibly apply for an emergency use authorization before the
Speaker 1: end of November. Karen Weintraub, health reporter at USA Today
Speaker 1: joins us for what to know about the latest vaccine news.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Karen, thanks for having me. Got
Speaker 1: some great news on the vaccine front today, the fires
Speaker 1: Are vaccine that's in collaboration with bio in Tech. They
Speaker 1: said that their vaccine candidates is shown to be effective
Speaker 1: in their early findings. They've enrolled over forty people and
Speaker 1: I think about thirty nine thousand of them or so
Speaker 1: have gotten the two shot protocol that is required on
Speaker 1: this one, and they're saying that they're getting great results
Speaker 1: on this. So Karen to us a little bit more
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah, it's really exciting. It's better than most
Speaker 1: people expected of the results would be. So the way
Speaker 1: this works is they vaccinate a bunch of people and
Speaker 1: then wait for them to get sick, and there are
Speaker 1: different kind of moments at which they take a look
Speaker 1: at the data. The companies don't have access to the
Speaker 1: data as time goes on. It's an independent board that
Speaker 1: knows half the participants are in a placebo group and
Speaker 1: half aren't, and so they have to wait to look
Speaker 1: and see did more people get infected in the placebo
Speaker 1: group versus the non placebo group, the active vaccine group.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened in this case. The vaccine was
Speaker 1: effective at preventing infection in those people who got the vaccine.
Speaker 1: In this first batch of data, it seemed like only
Speaker 1: trial participants actually came down with covide. Is that right? Yes,
Speaker 1: And that's what they do. They originally they were going
Speaker 1: to give us results that's thirty two participants, but they
Speaker 1: decided to go to over ninety just for more more assurance,
Speaker 1: and they'll stop at a hundred and sixty four because
Speaker 1: at that point, once they've been that many infections, they're
Speaker 1: sure that the vaccine will be effective. When we were
Speaker 1: hearing about all the development and when things get approved
Speaker 1: and all they were saying that if something is fifty
Speaker 1: to six effective, then that would be even good enough
Speaker 1: to get some type of authorization. So this is a
Speaker 1: lot better than that. And the two doses that they
Speaker 1: were given are given three weeks apart. Right, that's true
Speaker 1: for the Fiser vaccine. It's different for the other vaccines.
Speaker 1: But yes, that's right. So what's the reaction been so far?
Speaker 1: I know President Elect Joe Biden has said some stuff
Speaker 1: on this. President Trump has also weighed in on this.
Speaker 1: What's the reaction for all of it? Everybody's ecstatic. I mean,
Speaker 1: it literally couldn't be any better. There's no such thing
Speaker 1: as effective vaccine. Probably won't be that effective in the
Speaker 1: real world. People are sicker than they are when their
Speaker 1: trial participants, or have other things going on, they wait
Speaker 1: too long, other things, life intervenes. But a number like
Speaker 1: this couldn't be any better. I just hunt up with
Speaker 1: a doctor who said he called his parents and said,
Speaker 1: I have the first really good news in nine months
Speaker 1: for you, um talking about this result. That's great. Now,
Speaker 1: A couple of interesting things on this, this particular that
Speaker 1: seen candidate uses the m r n A and no
Speaker 1: product like this has ever been approved by regulators, so
Speaker 1: this would be a first if this goes all the
Speaker 1: way through and gets that authorization. It's new technology that
Speaker 1: luckily was under development before COVID for other conditions, and
Speaker 1: when COVID came along, all they really need to do
Speaker 1: is plug in the genetic code and they have a
Speaker 1: new vaccine for a new disease. And that's what they
Speaker 1: did in this case, and that's why they were able
Speaker 1: to turn it so quickly and bring it to the
Speaker 1: public so quickly. So they're waiting for a little bit
Speaker 1: more data. They're saying that maybe by the end of
Speaker 1: this month they can already put in the request for
Speaker 1: an emergency use authorization. So today's data was effectiveness data.
Speaker 1: What they're still waiting for safety data. And what the
Speaker 1: FDA has required is that they have to at least
Speaker 1: no median of half of the people have to have
Speaker 1: been out two months from their vaccine. So if you're
Speaker 1: going to have a side effect from the vaccine, it's
Speaker 1: most likely to happen in the first six weeks, and
Speaker 1: so they wanted to get a cushion beyond that more
Speaker 1: than half the people in the trial beyond that point,
Speaker 1: and that will they will hit that in the third
Speaker 1: week of November. The other interesting part of this particular
Speaker 1: vaccine candidate that it was not necessarily part of Operation
Speaker 1: Warp Speed. The federal government didn't pay to help develop
Speaker 1: this particular vaccine candidate. And beyond that, the amount of
Speaker 1: doses that they're expected to produce, what do we know
Speaker 1: about that? The federal government has paid for five other
Speaker 1: vaccines under development to bring them to the point of
Speaker 1: clinical trials, and through clinical trials, Fiser said, we've got this.
Speaker 1: We don't need your money for that. But they have
Speaker 1: taken almost or been promised almost two billion dollars for
Speaker 1: making doses of the vaccine. The companies say that they
Speaker 1: can have fifty million doses before the end of this
Speaker 1: year and over a billion next year. And that's the
Speaker 1: hard part too, is getting enough doses, uh, for people
Speaker 1: to get their shots. And especially it's the shoot two
Speaker 1: shot protocols, so you need twice as many really for
Speaker 1: every person. Finally, where do we stand on some of
Speaker 1: the other vaccine candidates. I know Maderna is said to
Speaker 1: have some news pretty soon, and and then obviously we
Speaker 1: have a few others that are already in phase three trials.
Speaker 1: Maderna their first interim results. It was supposed to be
Speaker 1: around now in the next week or two. It may
Speaker 1: be pushed off if they wait for more results like
Speaker 1: Fiser did, but we were expected to hear around now
Speaker 1: from Maderna. Novavax, which is another federally funded vaccine project.
Speaker 1: They should be able to start Phase three in the
Speaker 1: next couple of weeks. Astra Zeneca, which is collaborating with
Speaker 1: Oxford University. There in phase three Johnson and Johnson tonofi Um,
Speaker 1: but they haven't started to Phase three trials. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, all in all, great news on this front.
Speaker 1: So we'll see how this develops. It It seems like
Speaker 1: it's gonna start happening really fast, and then it will
Speaker 1: take some time still to get all those vaccine doses
Speaker 1: out to the public. But we're on our way. Karen Wine,
Speaker 1: trial health reporter at USA Today, Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thank you. I'm Astar Ramirez and this
Speaker 1: has been reopening America. Don't forget today's big news stories.
Speaker 1: He can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast
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