Chennai: Vaccine-maker Moderna has said that its mRNA Covid-19 vaccine was 100 per cent effective against severe cases of the disease, after releasing final results of its 30,000-person efficacy trial.
With the efficacy consistent across age, race, ethnicity, and gender demographics, the company says it will file a request for emergency use authorisation for its vaccine in the US with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and shall also seek approval from the European Medicines agency.
‘This positive primary analysis confirms the ability of our vaccine to prevent Covid-19 disease with 94.1 per cent efficacy and importantly, the ability to prevent severe Covid-19 disease. We believe that our vaccine will provide a new and powerful tool that may change the course of this pandemic and help prevent severe disease, hospitalisations and death’, said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna.
Also, it announced a supply agreement with the UK government for an additional two million doses of mRNA-1273, the company’s vaccine candidate against Covid-19.
According to a press release, the UK government has now secured seven million doses of mRNA-1273.
“On 16 November 16, Moderna announced that the independent, NIH-appointed Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for the Phase three study of mRNA-1273, has informed that the trial has met the statistical criteria pre-specified in the study protocol for efficacy”, the release said.
This study, known as the COVE study, enrolled more than 30,000 participants in the US and is being conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.