Moderna Covid-19 vaccine approved for use in Australia

Australia’s medical regulator has granted provisional approval for a new covid vaccine and it could be approved as an option for babies.

Australia’s medical regulator has granted provisional approval for a new Covid-19 vaccine and it could ultimately be approved as an option for babies as young as six months.

The Moderna jab is another MRNA vaccine that comes in two doses. It can be administered 28 days apart which is substantially faster than the 12-week wait between the first and second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The green light for the Moderna jab means that Australia now has three vaccines in the Covid-19 arsenal that already includes AstraZeneca and Pfizer.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia was expecting an estimated 10 million Moderna doses by the end of the year with the first jabs expected to be offered in late September.

“Today, we have been given the green light to take another important step forward to implement our national plan on the path forward out of Covid-19. The Therapeutic Goods Administration has given provisional approval for the use of Moderna for Australians aged 18 and over,” Mr Morrison said.

“This means we have an additional 25 million doses of Moderna to add to the 125 million Pfizer doses and 53 million AstraZeneca doses we‘ve already started rolling out.

“We have more doctors. We have more nurses. We have more pharmacists. We have more jabs in arms and now 10 million Moderna to add this year, with more than 1.3 million vaccine doses delivered in just one week, that is almost the population of the City of Adelaide.”

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And while there’s no approval yet for clinical trials on children aged under 12, the manufacturers of the Moderna vaccine have flagged it could be an option for younger Australians.

Before medical regulators provide that plan with the green light, more clinical trials will be needed to check for side effects.

Moderna wants to give its vaccine to babies. Picture: Joseph Prezioso/AFP

The Therapeutic Goods Administration confirmed on Monday that it has granted provisional approval to Moderna Australia for its Covid-19 vaccine also known as Spikevax.

“The Moderna Covid-19 vaccine has shown strong efficacy in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 and severe Covid-19 in clinical trials,” the TGA said in a statement.

“The vaccine has also received regulatory approval or emergency authorisation in several countries and is being widely used in the United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union, the United States, Switzerland and Singapore.

“Data to support the use of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine in adolescents aged 12 to 17 years are currently under evaluation and no specific concerns have been identified to date. The TGA’s decision on use in this age group will be announced separately.”

The only vaccine that has currently been approved for teenagers in Australia is the Pfizer vaccine. Like the Moderna jab it is an MRNA vaccine.

But despite growing calls from employers over the need to make the rules on which workers must be vaccinated clearer, the Prime Minister said he wasn’t planning to mandate vaccines.

This was an issue that would be left to employers and state public health orders.

“The vaccination service is free and it is not mandatory,” Mr Morrison said.

“That’s an important principle. We are not going to seek to impose a mandatory vaccination program by the government by stealth. That’s not what we are going to do. It is a non-mandatory program.

“Equally, business owners have property rights in terms of who they can allow to come in and out of their premises. Those property rights, those authorities that they have for their employees already exist.”