The pandemic is only getting worse.
At the moment, there are nearly 40 million global cases, with 1.1 million deaths. In the U.S., the count is up to 8.14 million. India is up to nearly 75. Million. Brazil is up to 5.2 million. Russia is nearing 1.4 million. Colombia is up to 952,373.
In Paris, and in eight other cities, restaurants, bars, theaters, and other businesses must now close no later than 9pm. In London, people from different households are now banned from meeting together indoors. In Northern Ireland a lockdown lasting four weeks are now in force, says the Chicago Tribune. “All pubs and restaurants must close except for takeaway services, and schools will close for two weeks for an extended half-term holiday.”
According to the head of the World Health Organization’s Europe office, “the exponential surge of coronavirus cases across the continent has warranted the restrictive measures being taken, calling them ‘absolutely necessary’ to stop the pandemic,” as reported by the Associated Press.
With that, there are fears of lockdowns in the U.S. again, too.
Until we have a vaccine in hand, the madness could easily continue. That’s why all eyes on are Pfizer (FPE) and BioNTech (BNTX). In fact, the two could be ready to file for emergency use authorization of their vaccine by mid-November 2020.
“We are operating at the speed of science. This means we may know whether or not our vaccine is effective by the end of October. To do so, we must accumulate a certain number of COVID-19 cases in our trial to compare the effectiveness of the vaccine in vaccinated individuals to those who received a placebo. Since we must wait for a certain number of cases to occur, this data may come earlier or later based on changes in the infection rates,” said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
The companies also need to make sure the vaccine is safe. With the US FDA needing two months of safety data on half of the trial participants following final dose of vaccine, the companies could meet that milestone by mid-November 2020.
