A New
York doctor is taking on a new role as the principal-lead investigator of the
promising vaccine trial.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced Monday that Dr. Stephen
Thomas was appointed the lead principal investigator for the world-wide
Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial.
The
recent announcement from Pfizer in Pearl River that their coronavirus vaccine
is 90% effective is creating a lot of hope and concern with how quickly the
vaccine will be developed.
Dr. Thomas, chief of infectious diseases at SUNY Upstate Medical University,
has a message for those who are still hesitant. "They're not taking risks
from a safety perspective, and taking a financial risk and that is allowing
timelines to move very quickly. The other thing is it used to take the FDA a
really long time, you could wait up to two years from the time you submitted a
packet asking for a license to weigh in, but they've been chipping away at that
timeline for years to less than 10 months. "
More than 300 adult volunteers are enrolled in SUNY Upstate's portion of the
45,000 person trial.
It will also be one of a few sites to add children to the study soon.