U.S. biotech company Moderna announced Monday that its coronavirus vaccine is more than 90 percent effective, according to preliminary results from a late-stage U.S. trial involving more than 30,000 people.
The results showed that 90 people in the placebo group and five in the vaccine group fell ill with COVID-19, which indicated an effectiveness rate of 94.5 percent, according to a company press release.
The results are on par with those announced last week by BioNTech and Pfizer, which reported that their coronavirus vaccine is more than 90 percent effective. Both Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer employ mRNA technology for their jab.
One difficulty with the German-American vaccine, however, is that it requires special freezers to keep the vaccine stored at around minus 80 degrees Celsius.
The vaccine from Moderna, by contrast, is “stable” between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius — the temperature of standard refrigerators — for 30 days, the company wrote in the release. The vaccine remains stable for up to six months at minus 20 degrees Celsius.
The company said it plans to submit data for emergency authorization in the U.S. “in the coming weeks,” but didn’t provide a timeframe for submitting data to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). It did note, however, that the company plans to submit applications to global regulatory agencies.
In related news, the EMA announced Monday that it launched a rolling review of the Moderna vaccine.
In August, the European Commission completed discussions to purchase 80 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, with the option to purchase another 80 million. The contract should be completed in the coming weeks.
The Commission has already completed contacts with four other vaccine producers, including BioNTech/Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca/University of Oxford and Sanofi/GSK. It’s expected to complete a fifth contract, with CureVac, this week.
