Pfizer raises Coronavirus vaccine 95 percent effectiveness after the last phase of testing and will apply for authorization for emergency use: After announcing the first promising results of the latest phase of its trials, Pfizer has just confirmed that its vaccine's effectiveness in preventing coronavirus infections is 95% as it prepares to apply for emergency authorization from the FDA.

The results have been communicated through a press release and have not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. They correspond to the 170 cases of COVID-19 observed in the study, with 162 of those diseases occurring among people who received a placebo.

The announcement comes days after Moderna announced an efficacy of 94.5% for its own vaccine candidate, above what Pfizer had previously reported.

However, the CEO of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, assured that until all the data were there it would be "naive to compare 90% with 94,5%".

"These are two great vaccines that are going to help many Americans and many people around the world," the CEO concluded.

Pfizer's results suggest that it prevents severe disease and that the vaccine does not cause serious adverse effects.

In fact, with the data revealed so far, the side effects of the Pfizer vaccine are less severe than those that causes the modern de.

However, it is not all resolved, as questions remain around the vaccine's ability to curb the pandemic.

Pfizer raises Coronavirus vaccine 95 percent effectiveness

"It's hopeful, but more vaccines need to be developed. First, because we do not know the duration of each vaccine and, secondly, because we do not know its long-term effectiveness," said Dr. María Montoya, researcher at the Center for Biological Research Margarita Salas of the CSIC (CIB-CSIC) and member of the board of Directors of the Spanish Society of Immunology, to Business Insider Spain.

On the other hand, the design of the trials of both vaccines has some limitations that makes it difficult to know what their actual effectiveness is in some cases. Neither modern nor Pfizer evaluate whether the vaccine prevents infections and symptomatic diseases, which are the key to controlling the spread of the virus.

"The data we have is that these vaccines protect you against serious diseases, but it doesn't mean you can't get infected and pass it on to your patient, your neighbor, your client or whoever," warns Ruth Karron, who heads the Immunization Research Center at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, to Science.

Although the vaccine has sparked optimism around the world, there are concerns about storage requirements for vaccine doses that require temperatures of 70 degrees below zero.

"It is difficult for vaccines to arrive in optimal conditions," explained Miguel Fernández, the CEO of Merck, at the Smart Business Meeting held by Business Insider Spain to delve into the challenges and opportunities of the pharmaceutical industry.

"In Spain and in general in advanced countries we have powerful logistics networks to guarantee the cold chain," said Fernández, who called for collaboration in the sector to ensure that Third World countries can access vaccines.

However, the World Health Organization has warned that no country is prepared for the storage and transport of this vaccine.

The pharmaceutical company has just launched a pilot program in four U.S. states to address the distribution challenges facing its vaccine.

"We hope that the results of this vaccine delivery pilot program will serve as a model for other U.S. states and international governments, as they prepare to implement effective COVID-19 vaccine programs," Pfizer said in a statement.

In addition, it is also working on other long-term alternatives and is shuffling the possibility of producing a version of its vaccine powder that would need only standard refrigeration by 2021.

Pfizer raises Coronavirus vaccine 95 percent effectiveness

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Cyber research, antihacking and even counterespionage: the CEO of the first Spanish firm of analysts and digital detectives explains how they use technology

Exactly 11 years ago a young man named Matthias committed suicide in a German prison cell.

He was arrested when he was only 20 years old, accused of illegally exploiting a vulnerability of a German social network called schulerVZ, similar to Tuenti. Thanks to his skills, he had managed to extract data and information from about 3 million users of the platform. According to Der Spiegel, the cybercriminal, who used the pseudonym Exit, put forward an economic deal to return the stolen information and close the gap. 80,000 euros.

Since no agreement was reached, the managers of the social network called the police and took the young man arrested. In the press the doubt was sown whether it had been the social network itself that had initially proposed an economic offer. The company denied it. But the controversy was already served.

By then, Selva Orejón had already returned to Spain. She had been the country manager of this social network for the Spanish and Latin American markets. In an old post on her company's blog, Orejón herself details the case. "It was not the first time we experienced an attack while we were in Germany. Once one of the managers released an inopportune comment: 'Our network is so secure that not even the best hackers could throw it' glorious phrase wherever there are. We were 17 days offline."

It was in that case, Orejón now tells Business Insider Spain, when the cybersecurity expert saw the vacuum of solutions and the needs that existed in a very specific field: the management of reputational crises and online reputation. Thus was born onBRANDING, the company in which Orejón is executive director and which is now about to turn 14 years old.

"Above all and at the beginning they were smear campaign efforts or companies that told me that they wanted to have an internet presence, but they saw it as very dangerous". Upon his return from Germany, Selva lived for a time in Madrid, where he was responsible for online reputation at multinationals such as Repsol. But it was when he returned to Barcelona that his company acquired more relevance.

"We saw a need: these crises should not only be managed in the field of communication, but also in the field of protection." "In the end, smear campaigns also have a number of legal and other consequences that are very important: very serious psychological consequences for the people or companies that suffer them," the expert details.

Today Selva Orejón and onBRANDING are references in the field of Spanish cybersecurity. He runs a key company to understand what an internet smear campaign is. It is able to dismantle such campaigns, make all the legal weight fall on its promoters, and even monitors the dark web and the deep web for comments, assets, or exfiltration that may affect its customers.

His work is so sensitive that he cannot give details of which clients he works with. "At the outset, we sign a confidentiality agreement with them that is two-way: neither they can reveal that they are working with us, so that they do not put us in the bull's-eye; nor we with them. When we take cases of fraud or even homicide, they can go after us."

In fact, Selva Orejón is, above all, a judicial expert. "And the experts I present have to sign with my name and with my last names," he says. "I have been threatened with death, and I am still threatened with death, because we have trampled on several people."

Now, the specialty of onBRANDING continues to be based on four verticals: communication management, legal management, monitoring and digital surveillance, and what for Selva Orejón is the most important. "What makes me throw more hours": the protection of victims.

In fact, Selva Orejón is, above all, a judicial expert. "And the experts I present have to sign with my name and with my last names," he says. "I have been threatened with death, and I am still threatened with death, because we have trampled on several people."

Now, the specialty of onBRANDING continues to be based on four verticals: communication management, legal management, monitoring and digital surveillance, and what for Selva Orejón is the most important. "What makes me throw more hours": the protection of victims.

With 14 years of experience at the head of the company behind him, Orejón details that the firm continues to grow and right now there are about thirty professionals. The problem is that being a company that works with such diverse profiles-including lawyers, analysts and detectives— it is difficult to make a closed overview of the team that works for it.

On top of that, onBRANDING is a firm with an iron-clad technological component. They are partners of many companies that offer cybersecurity and biometrics solutions. They have agreements signed with Umbra Analysis Group or the Israeli AnyVision, which installed the facial recognition cameras in Mercadona establishments for which the AEPD opened an investigation.

How do they use this technology? Selva Orejón details cases of banks that have come to onBRANDING when they have doubts about whether certain customers can hire the services they offer or not. Previously, managers did due diligence to potential clients in a very manual way, subjecting them to an examination, and contacting other institutions to check the reliability of the transactions that a particular client requested.