The Moderna vaccine generates global hope



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Biotech company Moderna announced on Monday that its possible Covid-19 vaccine is 94% effective and thus becomes the second option, along with Pfizer’s, to launch a mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus in 2021 – in authorities should approve it – something that has raised market hopes that the end of the worst of the pandemic is a little closer despite the increase in cases in the US and Europe.

“This is a pivotal moment in our development of the Covid-19 vaccine candidate (…) The positive preliminary results of our Phase 3 study have given us the first clinical validation that our vaccine can prevent disease including severe cases” Stéphane Bancel, CEO of the Massachusetts-based company, said in a statement.

Preliminary clinical data are based on analysis of 95 of 30,000 volunteers in phase 3 of the mRNA-1273 vaccine and response in five people who received doses of the vaccine, compared with 90 who received only a placebo.

The next step will be to provide all the documentation and efficacy data of at least two months necessary for the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA, in its acronym in English), to grant them emergency clearance, which allows them to be hand of experimental medical therapies and treatments against Covid-19.

Moderna assured that it hopes to make this request to the FDA “in the coming weeks” and in parallel initiate the authorization processes with regulatory agencies in other countries and regions.

“Avoid euphoria”

The good initial results of several experimental vaccines against Covid-19 have brought a certain feeling of euphoria that the World Health Organization (WHO) today asked to moderate, recalling that daily infections continue to break records and the coronavirus continues to be very dangerous.

“This is not the time for complacency,” warned WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has had to spend the past two weeks in solitary confinement for being in contact with a Covid-19 case.

Announcements of over 90 percent efficacy in vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech or that of the Russian laboratory developing Sputnik V “keep us cautiously optimistic that there will be more means against the coronavirus in the coming months,” the director said. . general at a press conference.

Tedros also made it clear, at the request of reporters, that he has not developed any symptoms of the disease since quarantine began on November 2, but that he has not been tested either.

Hours earlier, at the WHO Executive Committee meeting, the Ethiopian had warned that a possible vaccine against Covid-19 alone would not be sufficient to defeat the pandemic and “will only integrate other available means, without replacing it”. .

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