Pfizer: COVID-19 shot seems effective in elderly

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said Wednesday that new test results show its coronavirus vaccine is 95% effective, is safe and also protects older people most at risk of dying — the last data needed to seek emergency use of limited shot supplies as the catastrophic outbreak worsens across the globe.

According to the companies, the vaccine was more than 94% effective in adults over age 65, though it is not clear exactly how that was determined with only eight infections in the vaccinated group to analyze and no breakdown provided of those people's ages.

"It is very reassuring that the vaccine didn't just work, it worked really well and it worked really well in older people. And the reason why we were concerned about that specific number was that there's no guarantee that the vaccine would have worked equally in older and younger age groups," said Saad Omer, director of Yale Institute for Global Health.

The announcement comes as the team is preparing within days to formally ask U.S. regulators to allow emergency use of the vaccine. Anticipating that, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel is on standby to publicly debate the data during the second week of December.

Pfizer and BioNTech had initially estimated the vaccine was more than 90% effective after counting a group of the earliest infections that occurred in its final-stage testing. With the new announcement, they have accumulated more infections — 170 — and said only eight of them occurred in volunteers who got the actual vaccine rather than a comparison dummy shot. One of those eight developed severe disease, the companies said.

All eyes are on the progress of potential vaccines as the grim infection toll jumps in the U.S. and abroad as winter weather forces people indoors, in the close quarters that fuels viral spread.

"It's not the vaccines that save lives. It's the vaccination that saves lives. It's the act of getting the vaccine from the vial to the arm that saves lives. So there are distribution challenges. These are not insurmountable. There are challenges of vaccinating the whole country equitably," according to Saad Omer.