IANS | 30 Nov, 2020
Moderna Inc, which has reported its Covid-19 vaccine is 94 per cent
effective, on Monday announced it is filing with US and European
regulators for emergency use authorisation.
Moderna follows
barely a week after Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech filed for US
regulatory approval. By the end of 2020, Moderna expects to have
approximately 20 million doses of its mRNA-1273 vaccine available in the
U.S and is "on track to manufacture 500 million to 1 billion doses
globally in 2021.
Moderna created its shots in collaboration with
the U.S. National Institutes of Health and got a final batch of results
over the weekend which show the vaccine is more than 94% effective.
Moderna's
efficacy results are based on 196 Covid-19 cases in its huge U.S. study
with more than 30,000 participants. Of the 196 cases, 185 were in
participants who received the dummy shot and 11 who got the vaccine.
Severe cases and one death were reported in participants who got the
dummy shot.
Moderna expects to present its data to the US Food
and Drug Administration on December 17. First up will be Pfizer and
BioNTech, on December 10. Both Pfizer and Moderna are two-shot vaccines.
The
US government's vaccine management chief has said all systems are ready
to deliver the vaccines to priority groups within 24 to 48 hours of FDA
approval.
