Covid-19 roundup: Pfiz­er, BioN­Tech start US hu­man tri­al; World lead­ers (not in­clud­ing the US) pledge $8 bil­lion in vac­cine, treat­ment re­search

Last week, part­ners Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech joined the elite group of CanSi­no, Mod­er­na and Ox­ford who have be­gun hu­man tri­als of their ex­per­i­men­tal Covid-19 vac­cine. On Tues­day, the US-Ger­man part­ners kicked off dos­ing in the Unit­ed States.

The team, which kicked off dos­ing in Ger­many in late April, said the first US par­tic­i­pants had been giv­en a vac­cine from the BNT162 pro­gram in a Phase I/II tri­al. The vac­cine pro­gram in­cludes four ex­per­i­men­tal vac­cines — each with com­bi­na­tion of mR­NA for­mat and tar­get anti­gen — the de­sign of the tri­al will al­low for the eval­u­a­tion of the var­i­ous can­di­dates si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly so that the safest and po­ten­tial­ly most ef­fi­ca­cious can­di­date can be iden­ti­fied.

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