Moderna said Monday its COVID-19 vaccine is proving to be highly effective in a major trial, a second dash of hope in the global race for a shot to tame a resurgent virus that is now killing more than 8,000 people a day worldwide.
The company said its vaccine appears to be 94.5% effective, according to preliminary data from Moderna’s ongoing study. A week ago, competitor Pfizer Inc. announced its own COVID-19 vaccine appeared similarly effective — news that puts both companies on track to seek permission within weeks for emergency use in the U.S.
A vaccine can’t come fast enough, as virus cases topped 11 million in the U.S. over the weekend — 1 million of them recorded in just the past week. The pandemic has killed more than 1.3 million people worldwide, more than 245,000 of them in the U.S.
Dr. Stephen Hoge, Moderna’s president, welcomed the “really important milestone” but said having similar results from two different companies is what’s most reassuring.
“That should give us all hope that actually a vaccine is going to be able to stop this pandemic and hopefully get us back to our lives,” Hoge told The Associated Press.
“It won’t be Moderna alone that solves this problem. It’s going to require many vaccines” to meet the global demand, he added.
Still, if U.S. regulators allow emergency use of Moderna’s or Pfizer’s candidates, there will be limited, rationed supplies before the end of the year. Both require people to get two shots, several weeks apart. Moderna expects to have about 20 million doses, earmarked for the U.S., by the end of 2020. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech expect to have about 50 million doses globally by year’s end.
The reaction in global financial markets was immediate. The Dow doubled premarket gains and was up 500 points before the opening bell. Shares of Moderna, which rocketed 13% higher, were likely to hit an all-time high. Markets in Asia and Europe jumped sharply as well.
Moderna’s vaccine, created with the National Institutes of Health, is being studied in 30,000 volunteers who received either the real vaccination or a dummy shot. On Sunday, an independent monitoring board broke the code to examine 95 infections that were recorded starting two weeks after volunteers’ second dose — and discovered all but five illnesses occurred in participants who got the placebo.
The study is continuing, and Moderna acknowledged the protection rate might change as more COVID-19 infections are detected and added to the calculations. Also, it’s too soon to know how long protection lasts. Both cautions apply to Pfizer’s vaccine as well.
But Moderna’s independent monitors reported some additional, promising tidbits: All 11 severe COVID-19 cases were among placebo recipients, and there were no significant safety concerns.
The main side effects were fatigue, muscle aches and injection-site pain after the vaccine’s second dose, at rates that Hoge characterized as more common than with flu shots but on par with others such as shingles vaccine.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company’s vaccine is among 11 candidates in late-stage testing around the world, four of them in huge studies in the U.S.
Both Moderna’s shots and the Pfizer-BioNTech candidate are so-called mRNA vaccines, a brand-new technology. They aren’t made with the coronavirus itself, meaning there’s no chance anyone could catch it from the shots. Instead, the vaccine contains a piece of genetic code that trains the immune system to recognize the spiked protein on the surface of the virus.
The strong results were a surprise. Scientists have warned for months that any COVID-19 shot may be only as good as flu vaccines, which are about 50% effective.
Another steep challenge: distributing doses that must be kept very cold. Both the Moderna and Pfizer shots are frozen but at different temperatures. Moderna announced Monday that once thawed, its doses can last longer in a refrigerator than initially thought, up to 30 days. Pfizer’s shots require long-term storage at ultra-cold temperatures.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
These claims – 90%, now 94.5% – approach a Stalinist level of results.
It kind of makes me wonder when the Western scientific-industrial complex will exceed the 5 year plan.
As there’s no doubt that I’ll take one of them, I hope these claims can stand up to an independent scientific review.
One aspect of the mRNA vaccines that had been under-appreciated is that they also provoke a T-cell response in addition to the production of antibodies. There are indications that young children have fewer severe cases from the virus because their immune response is dominated by T-cells, and it could be the vaccines’ T-cell response that’s making these vaccines much more effective than anticipated.
[edited to fix typos. I wrote this before having my coffee this morning
]
I’m torn.
Sincerely, for the world’s benefit I have hope vaccinations will stanch the spread of the virus.
Long term I’m worried for the millions exposed to possible side effects that might be discovered a year or years from now.
I’m going to pass on vaccinations. By the way it looks-- the trials have been setup demographically as too broad a cross-section to target and benefit me categorically.
How long will it take for the Trumpster fire to turn this into a pissing match among the pharmas, pit one company aganst another, and proceed to fuck it all up in the process.
Now that there are apparently vaccines soon coming to the market Trump deserves a new election, since it’s really not fair he was forced to defend his office in the midst of a pandemic.