Pharmaceutical firm Moderna’s has announced that its Covid-19 vaccine is 94.5% effective treatment of coronavirus with few adverse side effects. Moderna’s CEO, Stephane Bance, described the positive preliminary analysis as, “a pivotal moment in the development of our COVID19 vaccine candidate”.
The trial dubbed Phase 3 Cove a joint operation between Moderna and the National Institute of Health (NIH). The breakthrough comes barely a week after Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE announced that their Covid-19 vaccine was 90 percent effective treatment of coronavirus.
In a statement, Moderna says that the Phase 3 trial primary endpoint is the prevention of symptomatic COVID-19 disease while the key secondary endpoints include prevention of the severe disease and prevention of infection by coronavirus.
The trial tested the vaccine in 30,000 participants in the United States with the first interim analysis based on 95 cases. Out of this interim group, 90 cases of COVID-19 were observed in the placebo group versus 5 cases observed in the mRNA-1273 group, resulting in a point estimate of vaccine efficacy of 94.5% (p <0.0001).
The 95 covid-19 cases included older adults (ages 65+), Hispanics, African American, Asian American, and multiracial participants. The phase 3 study has proved that Moderna’s vaccine can prevent COVID19 disease, including severe disease.
However, Bance says that, “a review of solicited adverse events indicated that the vaccine was generally tolerated. Side effects although short lived ranged from fatigue, headache, pain, redness at the injection area, and myalgia.
Moderna added that it would submit for an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) with the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the coming weeks. The pharmaceutical firm says it is seeking similar global authorization as the EUA anticipates the final safety and efficacy data in about 2 months.
In the meantime, the firm is preparing for distribution of the coronavirus vaccine with a target of 500 million to 1 billion doses globally in 2021.
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