A COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by German biotech firm BioNTech and U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has revealed potential and has been found to be well taken in early-stage human trials, the firms said on Wednesday.
The medication is among 17 being tested on humans in a frantic global race to discover a vaccine that the world is counting on to end a pandemic that has contaminated 10.5 million people and killed more than half a million thus far.

The potential remedy is that the fourth largest COVID-19 medication to demonstrate promise in human testing, along with projects between Moderna, CanSino Biologics and Inovio Pharmaceuticals.
BioNTech's shares were up about 8%, after rising as much as 19 percent to achieve their highest in more than three weeks.

Pfizer stock also gained, rising 4.4% to $34.13. In turn, shares in certain rival vaccine programmers, for example Moderna and Novavax Inc fell.
BioNTech stated testing of 2 doses of its BNT162b1 drug on 24 healthy volunteers revealed that after 28 days they'd developed greater levels of COVID-19 antibodies than typically seen in infected people.
It said the greater of both doses - both administered via two shots within three weeks of one another - had been followed with a short fever in three out of four participants after the next shot.
A third dosage, tested at a greater concentration in a different group, was not repeated after the initial shot because of injection pain.
<blockquote><span style="color: #ff6600;"><a style="color: #ff6600;" href="https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/pharma/coronavirus-update-biontech-pfizer-vaccine-show-promising-results-in-early-trials/story/408664.html">"These very first trial results reveal that the vaccine returns immune action and triggers a strong immune response," explained BioNTech's co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ugur Sahin.</a></span>
He explained bigger trials were being prepared to reveal whether that translates into defense against a true disease.

"While more work has to be performed, we consider the benefits seem to outweigh the risks thus far, especially when considering the illness that the vaccine is attempting to prevent," Mizuho Securities analyst Divan Vamil said in a note.
Bernstein analysts stated their first belief was that the information was"solid", but noted they don't anticipate the first generation of experiments to be silver bullets concerning conferring nearly complete coverage.</blockquote>