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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
James Moore

Is “back to normal” in sight as Pfizer and BioNTech thrill markets with vaccine trial results?

Photograph: REUTERS
L

ive music, crowds at sports events, pubs, restaurants, cinemas. Life, in other words, as normal. Is it safe to start talking about that after the Pfizer and German company BioNTech dropped the remarkable news about their vaccine candidate? Well, perhaps.

“I’ve been following all these studies about vaccines and if they’re rolled out… Maybe a really safe time will be next April,” Marcus Davey, the boss of Camden’s famous Roundhouse, told me in August on the subject of live events.

It’s now possible to foresee that “if” as a “when”. Pfizer/BioNTech reported results that have far exceeded experts’s hopes for their vaccine candidate (one of several). Large-scale trails have shown it to be 90 per cent effective with no adverse effects. It’s just possible that Davey’s hopes will be realised. And it isn’t just Davey. Entire industries will now be biting their nails and awaiting further news.

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