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For the second time this month, there is promising news from a COVID-19 vaccine candidate: Moderna said on Monday that its shots provide strong protection, a hint of hope against the gloomy backdrop of coronavirus spikes in the U.S. and around the world. world.
Moderna said its vaccine appears to be 94.5 percent effective, according to preliminary data from the company’s ongoing study. A week ago, competitor Pfizer Inc. announced that its COVID-19 vaccine appeared just as effective – news that puts both companies on track to seek authorization within weeks for emergency use in the United States. .
Dr. Stephen Hoge, chairman of Moderna, welcomed the “really important milestone,” but said having similar results from two different companies is what is most reassuring.
“This should give us all hope that indeed a vaccine will be able to stop this pandemic and hopefully bring us back to our lives,” Hoge told The Associated Press.
“It will not be just Moderna that will solve this problem. It will take a lot of vaccines” to meet global demand, he said.
A vaccine cannot arrive fast enough, as cases of the virus surpassed 11 million in the United States over the weekend, one million of which were registered in the last week alone. The pandemic has killed more than 1.3 million people worldwide, more than 245,000 in the United States
However, if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows for emergency use of Moderna or Pfizer candidates, there will be limited and rationed supplies before the end of the year. Both require people to get two hits, several weeks apart. Moderna expects to have approximately 20 million doses, destined for the United States, by the end of 2020. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech plan to have approximately 50 million doses globally by the end of the year.
Moderna’s vaccine, created with the National Institutes of Health, is being studied in 30,000 volunteers who have received the actual vaccination or a sham shot. On Sunday, an independent monitoring committee broke the code to look at 95 registered infections starting two weeks after the volunteers’ second dose and found that all but five diseases occurred in the participants who received the placebo.
The protection rate can change
The study is continuing, and Moderna acknowledged that the protection rate could change as more COVID-19 infections are detected and added to the calculations. Also, it’s too early to know how long the protection lasts. Both precautions also apply to Pfizer’s vaccine.
But Moderna’s independent monitors reported some additional and promising tidbits: All 11 severe cases of COVID-19 were among placebo recipients, and there were no significant safety concerns.
The main side effects were fatigue, muscle aches, and pain at the injection site after the second dose of the vaccine, at rates that Hoge characterized as more common than flu shots but on par with others such as the shingles vaccine.
Moderna’s stock skyrocketed after the announcement and appeared to be heading for an all-time high on Monday. The vaccine from the Cambridge, Mass. Company, is among 11 late stage test candidates worldwide, four of them in huge studies in the United States
Both Moderna shots and Pfizer-BioNTech candidate are so-called mRNA vaccines, a brand new technology. They are not made with the coronavirus itself, which means there is no chance anyone could catch it from the gunshots. Instead, the vaccine contains a piece of genetic code that trains the immune system to recognize the spiked protein on the surface of the virus.
The good results were a surprise. Scientists have warned for months that any COVID-19 injection can only be as good as flu vaccines, which are about 50 percent effective.
Another challenging challenge: distributing doses that must be kept very cold. Both Moderna and Pfizer shots are frozen but at different temperatures. Moderna announced on Monday that once thawed, its doses can last longer in the refrigerator than originally thought, up to 30 days. Pfizer’s shots require long-term storage at extremely low temperatures.
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