Will the Pfizer vaccine live up to the hype?

So is this the big turning point? Markets certainly seem to think so. No sooner had news broken that the vaccine being developed by Pfizer and German firm BioNTech is 90 per cent effective, the FTSE surged by 5 per cent. Given that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suggested that any vaccine that proves to be more than 50 per cent effective could be licensed, this suggests the vaccine will go on to be approved around the world.

Any vaccine that proves partly effective will be welcomed with open arms by a world which largely remains in lockdown or semi-lockdown. But does the reality live up the surge of relief which has gone around the world this morning? This morning’s announcement was of an independent review by a ‘data safety monitoring committee’ of the phase three trial of the drug. The drug had already passed its phase one and two trials, but many a vaccine fails in the phase three stage – when it is unleashed on a large number of volunteers in the community.