Drugmakers and research centers around the world are working on COVID-19 vaccines, with large global trials of several of the candidates involving tens of thousands of participants well underway. U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc with German partner BioNTech SE , U.S. biotech Moderna Inc and Britain-based AstraZeneca Plc in conjunction with University of Oxford researchers could provide early analyses of data from their various large trials over the next two months. The companies are testing their vaccines against a placebo – typically saline solution – in healthy volunteers to see if the rate of COVID-19 infection among those who got the vaccine is significantly lower than in those who received the dummy shot.
