Washington, D.C, United States – US biotech firm Moderna Inc revealed that their vaccine has proven to be 100% in preventing severe Covid-19 and that they will be submitting their vaccine for emergency approval on November 30.
The company revealed that they had finished their Phase 3 clinical trial with 30,000 participants. According to Moderna, the early data from their trial shows that their vaccine has proven to be 100% effective at preventing severe Covid-19 and 94% at preventing the disease more broadly.
While Moderna proudly stated that the effect of their vaccine has proven to be consistent across various demographics, including age, gender and ethnicity, they informed that no serious concerns were identified either. The side effects that were noticed from their vaccine was only injection site pain, headaches and fatigue.
Moderna submitted their successful Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use authorization to the U.S.’s Food and Drug Administration yesterday and the FDA is expected to meet to consider the vaccine on December 17.
We believe that our vaccine will provide a new and powerful tool that may change the course of this pandemic and help prevent severe disease, hospitalizations and death
The CEO of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel stated.
Moderna is currently aiming to manufacture 20 million doses of their vaccine and to ship them to the United States by the end of 2020. This will be enough for only 10 million people as the Moderna vaccine requires two doses for each individual. In addition to this, Moderna informed that their plan is to manufacture between 500 million to 1 billion doses in 2021.
Along with Moderna, the pharmaceutical corporation, Pfizer and their German partner BioNTech also revealed three weeks ago that they have given their vaccine for emergency approval to U.S.’s Food and Drug Administration.
Their vaccine has proven to be only 95% effective and 94% effective for the volunteers who were over the age of 65, however, as the side effects of this vaccine is at a minimum as well, the White House vaccine chief, Moncef Slaoui stated that it is likely to be given approval on the second week of December.
Moderna seems to have an upper hand in the vaccine competition than Pfizer as the effectiveness rate of Moderna is low and it does not require heavy storage requirements.
Pfizer needs their Covid-19 vaccine to be at minus 70 degrees this is why the company has gotten approval to freight their vaccine in increased quantities of dry ice at minus 70 degrees. This means that the vaccine from Pfizer needs to be kept at specialized freezers that cost as much as $20,000 and which are rare in medical facilities.
On the other hand, Moderna claims that their vaccine has a longer shelf life when it is refrigerated at the ‘normal’ fridge temperatures and at room temperature as well, making it a lot easier and less costly to store the vaccine.
Nevertheless, as both of the vaccines have a considerably high effectiveness rate, they are likely to be given approval for emergency use during December. According to Slaoui, they will start giving vaccines to the people after about two days of approval.
