More than 15,000 family members, friends and neighbors fell for the coronavirus last week. So, I could hear almost a national sigh of relief when the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, started delivering the first doses of vaccine across the country. Pfizer, a frequent advertiser on this broadcast, and his German partner, BioNTech, were the only major vaccine developers to turn down federal money for research and development, yet they were the first to receive emergency FDA clearance . On Friday, the biotechnology company, Moderna, was also granted permission. In Operation Warp Speed, the federal government set a target of 20 million inoculations by the end of the year. But this goal could be ambitious; the launch of the vaccine was rocky. However, for the first time since the pandemic hit, there seems to be an end, thanks to a revolutionary progress in biotechnology.
Bill Whitaker: This is a global pandemic, the worst in … a century. A vaccine with this technology had never been on the market before. It’s a big bet you made that this would work.
Kathrin Jansen: Yeah, I haven’t seen that much – maybe it’s a bet because we’re scientists. That’s what we do for a daily life, every day. We discover new things. Everything is new.
Kathrin Jansen is the head of vaccine research and development for Pfizer. Based in New York, it is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Jansen, who developed an interest in science in childhood in Germany, grew up to develop vaccines for pneumonia and the HPV virus. So when she first heard about the novel coronavirus, her thoughts immediately turned to a vaccine.
Bill Whitaker: When you started this mission, New York was on fire with this virus.
Kathrin Jansen: Yes. I lived in a hot area of New York. And I saw directly what was happening – every day. And Bill, the worst thing for me was when we walked the dog. And you see one refrigerated truck after another appearing in the parking lots in front of the hospitals.
Bill Whitaker: Refrigerated trucks?
Kathrin Jansen: Morgues, right. This absolutely fueled the desire to come up with a vaccine, no matter what is needed.
Bill Whitaker: Was it kind of personal?
Kathrin Jansen: I took this very personally. I wanted to fight him, to beat him, to fight him. It was … nothing else mattered.
Across the Atlantic, in Mainz, German doctors Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci also focused on fighting the coronavirus. The founders of a leading biotechnology company called BioNTech had collaborated with Pfizer on an influenza vaccine when Sahin read an article – on January 24 – about a mysterious disease in Wuhan, China.
Dr. Ugur Sahin: I knew we were most likely facing a global pandemic. And I knew we had no time to waste.
Dr. Ozlem Tureci: We started thinking – how to implement – a vaccine development program from scratch, so we had to pivot the whole company.
Bill Whitaker: Did you have any doubts about that?
Dr. Ugur Sahin: I had no doubts. The only thing that worried me was that we might be too late.
The married couple’s company, BioNTech, is pioneering mRNA vaccines – molecules in our cells that transmit genetic instructions from our DNA to particles that make proteins, the building blocks of life.
Dr. Ugur Sahin: I felt the responsibility to start developing a vaccine because I knew the power of our technology.
Manipulation of mRNA molecules in the laboratory to combat disease has been considered a promising technology for more than 30 years, but has never produced a proven vaccine. With the spread of coronavirus throughout Europe, Sahin and Tureci regained their efforts. By February, BioNTech had produced 20 different versions of mRNA that triggered immune responses in mice and monkeys. Sahin knew that his small company would need help to take the research beyond the lab, so he picked up the phone and called his Pfizer friend Kathrin Jansen.
Dr. Ugur Sahin: And she said, “Ugur, why are you calling me?” And I said, “Kathrin, we’ve started a vaccine against COVID-19. I wanted to ask you if you think Pfizer will join us.” And she said: “Of course, Ugur, I actually wanted to call you, because we are also interested in developing a vaccine and it will become our most important project.”
It has become more of an obsession for Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla …
Albert Bourla: What I was thinking was if … if not us, then who? We have a lot of experience with vaccines. We have a lot of vaccine production capacity. I went and said, “We need to do something to see if we can help develop a medical solution.”
Since March, he has been pressuring Pfizer scientists to quickly develop a vaccine. He set a deadline for October.
Albert Bourla: Then, of course, I gave them some tools in their hands. I told them they should think, this is not the usual thing. The return on investment is not taken into account. It is considered that in order to have an open checkbook, it is not so …
Bill Whitaker: an open checkbook.
Albert Bourla: Yes.
Bill Whitaker: Did you have any idea how much you would be willing to spend?
Albert Bourla: It will cost us around $ 2 billion. And I knew that– if we failed and had to eliminate it, it would be very painful. But it won’t take Pfizer down.
Kathrin Jansen convinced her boss, Albert Bourla, that mRNA technology has the best chance of meeting its deadline. From her work with BioNTech on an influenza vaccine, she was convinced that the mRNA was on the verge of discovery. So Pfizer CEO Bourla signed the partnership and rolled the dice on experimental technology.
Bill Whitaker: There was a good chance you wouldn’t make it.
Albert Bourla: I believe in the power of science. I believe in the power of the private sector. And I believe in the miracles that science in the private sector can do for humanity.
Unlike old vaccines made with real viruses often grown slowly in eggs, these mRNA molecules are quickly produced in a laboratory, programmed with a bit of the virus’s genetic code. We’ve all seen images of the coronavirus with its crown of spike proteins. The mRNA vaccine instructs your healthy cells to replicate the tips. I can’t make you sick, but teach your immune system what the virus looks like. If the real virus appears, the antibodies in the immune system will attack.
By May, Pfizer was ready to begin testing the vaccine in various parts of the United States
Dr. Mark Mulligan: And I raised my hand and said yes.
They beat Dr. Mark Mulligan, director of the NYU-Langone Vaccination Center in Manhattan.
Dr. Mark Mulligan: I’ve worked on HIV / AIDS, Zika, Ebola vaccines – pandemic flu vaccines. So this is really the time to come in and say, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s try to be part of the solution “.
Nearly 44,000 people around the world volunteered for double-blind studies testing placebo vaccines – most between the ages of 16 and 85. Researchers were skeptical when they turned to African-American and Hispanic volunteers.
Bill Whitaker: Were these communities well represented in lawsuits?
Dr. Mark Mulligan: I feel they were. If you add the Hispanic population and the black African-American population and the Native American population, it has reached just under 40%. We wish we did a little better, especially with African Americans. I was just under 10%. But I think it’s generally good and I’ve had several town halls with community partners in Harlem. It is important for us to be able to say, “Yes. That I tested it in your community. Yes, it was just as tolerated, safe, and just as protective.
Stage tests normally run sequentially. To expedite the process, the FDA allowed these studies to run simultaneously. Dr. Mulligan told us he had never seen her so quickly.
Bill Whitaker: What do you tell people who worry that it was too fast, that this is being brought to market?
Dr. Mark Mulligan: Given … the huge public health emergency we have at the international level, it was appropriate that all speed be used. I have been doing vaccine studies for 30 years and I promise that the corners were not cut at the usual safety assessments.
Volunteer blood samples were brought to this Pfizer unit in Pearl River, New York, where these robots ran day and night to help analyze the vaccine’s effectiveness. They will continue to collect and analyze evidence for two years.
Kathrin Jansen: These robots took care of about 180,000 tests.
When the critical results of the third phase were revealed last month, Kathrin Jansen was taking a break in the country with her husband. He received a phone call from Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
Kathrin Jansen: And I said, “What’s going on, Albert?” He said, “Well, Kathrin, we’ve talked to the FDA, we can say that the vaccine is over 90% effective.” And I said, “What? (Laughter) It’s fantastic. ” So, my husband and I were sitting right next to me, we … jumping up and down.
Dr. Mark Mulligan: To have a vaccine that was so necessary and to be 95% protective and to happen so quickly is unmatched in my experience.
Bill Whitaker: Can we all say goodbye to our masks?
Dr. Mark Mulligan: I’m afraid not. We are not yet sure that vaccines will prevent asymptomatic infection. The vaccine will probably not make a difference to the current growth we are in.
Bill Whitaker: We’ll be going through this for a while.
Dr. Mark Mulligan: Absolutely. This will not be like a light switch that is on / off, but rather like those dimmer switches that we turn slowly to turn on the lights. 5%, 10%, 20% 50% of people vaccinated within a few months. But to end the pandemic in 2021, we probably need to vaccinate 75% of people and then we can stop the pandemic.
There are still a number of unknowns about this vaccine: how long it lasts; there are long-term safety issues, why have some people had severe allergic reactions? It still needs to be tested on young children and pregnant women. But the most pressing issue: the rugged launch. The development of the vaccine has been rapid, but so far the distribution has been nothing more than. Pfizer has reduced the number of doses projected for 2020 by more than 50%, citing a shortage of raw materials. States complain that they do not receive clear guidance from the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed on what they receive and when. At this time, the light at the end of the tunnel is still dim.
In the last week, when the number of deaths in the US due to the pandemic reached 300,000, the bells at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC rang 300 times – once for every thousand Americans killed by the virus.
Bill Whitaker: This vaccine has been called a miracle. How would you describe it?
Kathrin Jansen: We can call it a miracle. But a miracle always feels like it just happened. It didn’t just happen. Right? It was something deliberate. It was with passion, done with passion. It was urgent. He always had that devastating disease in your eyes.
Produced by Marc Lieberman. Associate producer, Ali Rawaf. Broadcasting partner, Emilio Almonte. Edited by Sean Kelly.