Moderna's Covid-19 Vaccine Is Next in Line for Authorization

The Wall Street Journal reports that Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine will likely secure emergency-use authorization later this week, starting with today's issuance of data on the effectiveness of the shot by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee will discuss this data on Thursday. The FDA is expected to fast-track approval of the Moderna vaccine if there is a favorable recommendation. The drugmaker previously declared that its experimental vaccine was 94.1 percent effective in protecting people against the disease, with 196 people in the 30,000-person trial experiencing symptoms — 185 of those were administered a placebo while 11 got the vaccine. Moderna expects to have 20 million doses available for the United States to ship by year's end, sufficient for inoculating 10 million people with the two-shot regimen. The company anticipates manufacturing between 500 million and 1 billion doses in 2021 for global use.