Moderna's COVID-19 Vaccine Gets Backing From FDA Advisory Panel

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended that Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine be cleared for use by people 18 and older, reports the Wall Street Journal . This sets the stage for the agency to approve emergency-use authorization by late Friday and makes the Moderna treatment the second COVID-19 vaccine to receive authorization after last week's approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Panel member and Stanford University pediatrics professor Hayley Gans said "the evidence for the vaccine highly outweighs any issues that we have seen." The emergency-use authorization would sanction the beginning of the Moderna vaccine's distribution as soon as this weekend. Federal officials expect to ship almost six million doses to over 3,200 sites nationwide in the initial batch, while Moderna expects to deliver 20 million doses in all by the end of December. Moderna's vaccine can be transported and stored at higher temperatures than Pfizer's, which needs special freezers and dry ice.