“People who take our vaccine have a 94% chance of having no symptoms,” says Moderna CEO

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel assured Saturday 5 December on franceinfo that no person infected with Covid-19 and who had received the vaccine from the American company had developed a severe form of the disease. “We know that people who take our vaccine have a 94% chance of having zero symptoms of Covid-19 if they are infected., he explained on franceinfo. The 6% presenting symptoms of the disease are mild symptoms. There have been no people who have had a severe case of Covid, which results in hospitalization, intensive care and in the worst cases death. “

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Stéphane Bancel also explains that it is too early to say whether the vaccine prevents contagion, although he believes the results observed in monkeys are very encouraging. Europe has ordered 80 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, with another 80 million optional.

franceinfo: When will Moderna vaccines be available in France?

Stéphane Bancel: We submitted the files on 30 November to the European Medicines Agency, in the United States, Canada, England, etc … We were informed on Tuesday 1 December by the European Medicines Agency that the scientific committee which would review the final data before for approval to meet on January 12. So we’ll wait for that date. The process is no longer in our hands. All regulatory agencies have the same record. We are available 24/7 to answer their questions, but the timing of approval is up to them.

We did phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3. We did phase 3 with 30,000 people. So it is a very large phase 3 compared to other vaccines, necessary given the urgency of having data very quickly. We know that people who take our vaccine have a 94% chance of having zero Covid-19 symptoms if they are infected. The 6% presenting symptoms of the disease are mild symptoms. There have been no people who have had a severe case of Covid, which results in hospitalization, intensive care and in the worst cases death.

Do we know if the vaccine prevents the transmission of the virus? How long does immunity last?

We do not yet have the global answer to these two questions. We do not have the data on the transmission but we will probably have them in the first quarter. This is a very important question for the pandemic.

“All the regulatory agencies agreed when clinical trials began that the number one goal is to stop the disease, to stop severe cases.”

Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna

to franceinfo

Regarding the duration of immunity, we have three-month data on the level of antibodies. The good news is that all participants, including the elderly, have a slight drop in antibody levels. We think that on a young person we will be able to draw a few years, even if it is difficult to say if it will be two years, five years … In the elderly it may be necessary to do a booster more frequently, perhaps once a year or every two years.

Can’t we say today that the vaccine stops the infection 100%?

I don’t have the scientific data. I think it will be possible for a certain percentage of people to have the vaccine, because in the monkey models we did, where we vaccinate and then give very high doses of the virus in the nose, we see that on the second day there is hardly any virus in the nose and on the fourth day there is none at all. And we have given extremely high doses, much higher than the natural doses of a natural infection. And since the monkey, in contagious for vaccines, is generally a good species for predicting what happens in humans, we think we have a good chance of having the same thing in humans, but as long as’ We haven’t proven that with the data, I can’t say for sure.