Pfizer’s and BioNTech’s vaccine is the start of the end of the pandemic

DURING THIS coronavirus-blighted year, through many difficult days of isolation and fear, the world has hoped for better times. It has hoped for better treatments for covid-19, faster testing and better understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 wreaks havoc on the human body. Many of those things have arrived. But one hope in particular has been uppermost: that a vaccine may be found. Its fulfilment seems to be in sight.

On November 9th Pfizer and BioNTech, two pharmaceutical firms, announced that the vaccine on which they have been collaborating is more than 90% effective in preventing symptomatic cases of covid-19. This is an astonishing result for a first-generation vaccine. Many had not dared to hope for efficacy of anything over 70%.