Moderna said Monday its coronavirus vaccine was nearly 95% effective in an interim analysis, putting a second drugmaker on track to request emergency approval within weeks.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company said it counted 95 cases within its trial of 30,000 and found only five of them were in the vaccine arm of the trial versus 90 in the placebo group.
It also looked at 11 severe cases of COVID-19 and found that all of them received the dummy shots, not the vaccine.
“This is a pivotal moment in the development of our COVID-19 vaccine candidate,” said CEO Stéphane Bancel, whose company has been working with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since January. “This positive interim analysis from our Phase 3 study has given us the first clinical validation that our vaccine can prevent COVID-19 disease, including severe disease.”
The news comes one week after Pfizer said its coronavirus vaccine was over 90% effective in a preliminary analysis.
While more analysis is needed, the early results stunned experts who had lower expectations for efficacy.
The world desperately needs a vaccine that can bring the coronavirus down to manageable levels in 2021.
Discovered in Wuhan, China, in December, the virus ripped around the globe, killing over 1.3 million — including over 246,000 in the U.S.
The White House wants the Food and Drug Administration to act swiftly on emergency-use requests from companies, so they can produce as many doses as possible in the coming months.
The vaccination campaign could start as soon as December, with an estimated 20 million doses and then 25-30 million per month afterward.
Health workers will be immunized first, followed by other essential workers, the elderly and people with high-risk medical conditions. The general public should be able to get vaccinated by late March or April, according to federal timelines.
