we're going to bring you right up to
date with our breaking story this hour
that announcement
that trials carried out by the u.s
pharmaceutical giant pfizer and the
german manufacturer bioentech
suggests they have created a coronavirus
vaccine which is more than
90 percent effective our health
correspondent anna collinson joins me
now anna we've been hearing
uh from the ceo of pfizer saying this is
a great day for science and humanity
and a significant step forward it feels
that way
is it yes definitely it definitely feels
like a huge milestone you know
with with these vaccines they're one of
the greatest tools that we have to get
out of the
lockdown restrictions that some of us
are living in the social distancing not
being able to see our loved ones
vaccines are seen as a tool to help us
get there and this is a huge
moment so this vaccine has jointly been
developed by the u.s
drugs corporation pfizer and the german
company by in tech and it's the studies
enrolled
more than 43 000 people from across six
different countries
and they say the vaccine so far with as
part of ongoing trials
is ninety percent effective in
preventing coveted infections
and they say there's no serious safety
concerns but they do have to keep
collecting data
these two companies are now calling for
the ability to have emergency licensing
so they can get this vaccine out to the
general public
as quickly as possible ideally before
christmas and that is the big question
what needs to happen now so that it can
become available quickly
well while this data is extremely
encouraging and this does feel like an
extremely positive moment
the trials are still ongoing and what's
most important with when you are
thinking about a vaccine
is safety there are also lots of caveats
that come with this vaccine
so for example it's reported the vaccine
would need to be kept at -80 degrees
so there are issues about how you would
roll this out to places you know we're
talking about in england
nhs england are talking about preparing
gps and pharmacists to administer a
vaccine
how are they going to be able to store
that vaccine in a minute there's not
enough cold storage
well exactly exactly how are you going
to get that out
across across the globe to everywhere
and have that stored
appropriately you're also battling
attitude certain people don't want to be
vaccinated they don't trust it they
don't believe in it
um and also it's also important to point
out that this vaccine probably
almost certainly won't work for everyone
multiple different types of vaccines
will be needed like what we see with
a seasonal flu for example and also it
just won't work for some people so other
measures will still be needed so when
they say it's 90
effective have they broken that down
does that mean across every age group
because obviously there's more concern
for the elderly and the vulnerable
so what we have at the moment and as you
know this story's only broken in the
last hour or so as they are saying 90
across the board but they have covered a
wide range of groups of people
people as young as 16 uh people with hiv
and hepatitis c
so and they've covered people from
across six different countries so they
do have a real
overview of what's going on but another
question that often springs up and we're
talking about vaccine how long
would it be effective for do we know
that well again this is this is it you
know they're trialling
a vaccine that up until now it's it's
however old you know
it could be working up to this point but
we don't know so
it's all about trying to um get as much
data as possible and
uh being as hopeful as possible getting
it out as quickly as possible and
testing
and making it sure it's as safe as
possible but yeah the hope is
that it would uh deal with the symptoms
the concern is it may not completely
tackle the infection
okay anna stay with us we're going to
bring in dr sophie harman who is global
health expert and professor of
international politics
at queen mary university london sophie
your reaction to this news from pfizer
well of course it's very exciting i
think you know the world has been
waiting for this vaccine so
i think it's a testament to how
pharmaceutical companies
scientists governments have been working
together however let's not get carried
away
as your correspondent was just saying
there is an issue of safety
scale we still don't know a lot about it
but there is a pause for thought
this does come with some cautions though
this shouldn't be a reason for us to
take you know
the foot off the pedal with in terms of
getting the basics right
around tracking the virus test and trace
and things like that
we still need those vaccines are not a
silver bullet
and again we have this wider question of
trust and access and i think these are
the two issues that are going to really
come into play
globally what needs to be done about
that issue sophie because actually in
the past 10 minutes we've heard from the
german health minister as well
and he has said we're really going to
need a high level of acceptance
of a vaccine like this for it to be
effective what can
the health professionals governments do
to
you know ensure that that exists amongst
the public
well this is a huge challenge and i
think the one thing is there is good
will towards science and public health
so trying to
increase transparency around the trials
i think having a lot of volunteers
participate also helps so people can
understand
that this isn't science happening
somewhere in a laboratory
it involves us as citizens as well but
of course it's about
countering these false narratives around
concerns around vaccines
it's about not necessarily dismissing
people but meeting where the
kind of unease is and trying to explain
it
it's also about community mobilizing so
we know that in previous
anti-vaccination issues
actually having building trust within
community among community leaders
is huge so it's not just about world
leaders or
public health officials you know making
announcements around the safety of
vaccines
it's about looking at community
healthcare workers and community
politicians
really driving home that message of
trust you mentioned world leaders they
do have a very big role to play though
and the news today that joe biden is
setting up a task force straight away
that is his
main priority as he is president-elect
now of
the us what do you make of that sophie
and the importance of that moment of
saying
i'm making upper task force it's going
to have scientists
experts republicans democrats but you
know we're going to tackle this and
science is going to be
you know the main argument that we use
now yeah absolutely so joe biden was
consistent on the campaign trail that he
was going to follow the science and you
know
day one as president-elect or working
day one he's come out
with this task force now remember there
were scientists and public health
officials on trump's task force for
covid19
but it was led by vice president mike
pence not the case with biden he's got
three scientific scientists and public
health officials leading this
and not only that he's saying right you
tell me what to do
i'm going to follow you now that's not
the whole case because of course
biden is going to have to do some really
sophisticated political
bipartisan support to back his plan
we know that the us is divided we saw
that with the election results
and if he's going to get his strategy to
have americans wear masks as a mandatory
intervention
he's going to need to get the
republicans on side well it also just
helped though sophie in terms of
global cooperation around tackling the
pandemic if we have
joe biden in charge in the white house
his attitude for instance towards the
who
and other organizations just may change
the whole tone of discussion
oh yes very much so so i think on
saturday you could probably hear
the sigh of relief coming from geneva
from the world health organization
that biden was going to become
president-elect he has been very
explicit in saying that he will
recommit the us to the world health
organization
but he has also noted that the who is
you know it's not without its flaws
so he's going to be a supporter of it
but this doesn't mean
he's not going to be a critical
supporter of the who
but really when it comes to global
health security we're seeing a reset to
2016. we're seeing global health
security directorate
reset up in the white house more money
towards the centers for disease control
and as you say a commitment to
multilateral institutions like the who
what's going to be important is to see
what biden does
around kovacs now kovacs is the
organization
around vaccines and ensuring equitable
access to vaccines in lower middle
income
countries trump has shown very little
interest in that so let's see what biden
says
dr sophie harmon great to have you with
us thanks so much for joining us
sophie they're talking about kovacs i
wanted to ask you well as well anna
about
availability and distribution of the
fisa vaccine it's not the only one in
development
there are other vaccines bring us
upstairs
in terms of where they are at and then
what happens which countries get which
vaccine
how does that whole process work yeah
sure so i mean there's hundreds of
vaccines sort of in the pipeline and
around 12
that are at this stage and fizer's the
one that sort of
beat those other to the post with this
big announcement today
another vaccine that has been in the
running particularly
the uk's had their eye on is a vaccine
from the university of oxford
and astrazeneca now they are all in a
similar stage to
uh pfizer and as i say as the the data
from pfizer is looking particularly
encouraging we still have to wait to the
end of this trial to see how
that turns out and it's the same with
the other vaccines that are also in the
pipeline
uh so yeah so as i say this this
vaccine has sort of taken the lead at
this point
but it could be that as time goes on
other ones overtake that certain
vaccines have
um are more useful for treating a
certain type of people a certain group
of people
and so it's really still so much to play
for but a huge moment
thank you so much for being with us anna
and i will let you get back to looking
into what's happening with the spies of
vaccine we'll bring you more
as soon as we get it but certainly a
very big moment in terms of tackling the
pandemic