Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine exceeds 90% effectivity, data reveals

The US biotech company Moderna announced that their COVID-19 vaccine is 94.5 percent effective based on their data from the late-stage clinical trial.

Moderna is the second company in America who announced the good result of their vaccine trials after the data released by Pfizer, which, in collaboration with BioNTech, reported that their vaccine was more than 90 percent effective.

The two companies’ vaccine exceeded the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine requirement of being at least 50 percent effective for it to be approved.

Both vaccines were created using a synthetic version of a coronavirus' genetic material, called messenger RNA or mRNA, to program ones cells to churn out many copies of a fragment of the virus which set off alarms in the immune system and stimulates it to attack, should the real virus try to invade.

According to Moderna spokesman, Ray Jordan, although both vaccines are made of mRNA, their temperature requirements differ because they use different proprietary formulations of fat to encase and protect the mRNA.

Compared to the vaccine created by Pfizer, Moderna’s does not need an ultra-cold storage. It can be refrigerated for up to 30 days.

The relative ease of handling Moderna vaccine would give a big advantage according to an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, Dr. William Schaffner.

“This vaccine presents the opportunity of using doctors’ offices, clinics and pharmacies as vaccination sites,” Schaffner added.

Moderna can produce 20 million doses this year and are just waiting for FDA authorization before vaccinating the public.

“Assuming we get an emergency use authorization, we’ll be ready to ship through Warp Speed almost in hours… So it could start being distributed instantly,” said Moderna President Stephen Hoge.

Ten other vaccine makers are also conducting big Phase 3 trials including Australia, Britain, China, India and Russia.

Globally, as of November 17, 2020 there have been 55,074,994 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 1,320,146 deaths, as of the report from World Health Organization.

Philippines ranked number 26 with a total of 410, 718 active cases, 374, 543 recoveries and 7,862 deaths.

Photo from the European Pharmaceutical Review