Coronavirus: Moderna seeks emergency nod for vaccine

Hopes for a first wave of vaccinations before the end of 2020 received from US firm Moderna.

Moderna headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Picture: AFP

Hopes for a first wave of vaccin­ations before the end of the year have received a boost, with US firm Moderna saying it was filing on Tuesday for emergency author­isation of its COVID-19 vaccine in the US and Europe.

After top US scientists warned Americans to brace for a “surge superimposed on the surge”, Moderna reported that full results had confirmed a high efficacy estim­ated at 94.1 per cent.

It was set to join American pharmaceutical maker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, which applied­ for similar approvals last week, and has predicted its vaccine­ could be greenlit in the US shortly after December 10.

If the US Food and Drug Administr­ation agrees that Moderna’s product is safe and effective, the first of the drug’s two doses could be injected into the arms of millions of Americans by the middle of this month.

“We believe that our vaccine will provide a new and powerful tool that may change the course of this pandemic,” said Moderna chief executive officer Stephane Bancel.

US Health Secretary Alex Azar told CBS News: “We could be seeing both of these vaccines out and getting into people’s arms before Christmas.”

Co-developed with the US National­ Institutes of Health, the jabs were generally well tolerated, with the most common side effects­ including injection-site pain, fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain and headache.

Moderna expects to have about 20 million doses of the vaccine­, mRNA-1273, available in the US by the end of the year, and between 500 million to a billion doses globally next year.

The news came after leading US scientist Anthony Fauci voiced his fears as millions of traveller­s returned home after the Thanksgiving holiday.

The US is the worst-affected country, with more than 267,000 COVID-19 deaths, and President Donald Trump’s administration has issued conflicting messages on mask-wearing, travel and the danger posed by the virus.

“What we expect, unfortun­ately, as we go for the next couple of weeks into December, is that we might see a surge super­imposed on the surge we are alread­y in,” Dr Fauci told NBC.

At least 1,466,760 fatalities have been recorded worldwide since the outbreak emerged in China last December, as of Tuesday.

The World Health Organisation insisted it was doing everything possible to find the animal origins of the virus, despite the fact that it hadn’t yet sent a full team of experts to China to probe the matter. Observers have voiced con­cern­ that the agency has bowed to Chinese pressure and dragged its feet over the investigati­on, but WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hit back and urged critics to stop “politicising” the issue.

Dr Tedros added that he was alarmed over a rapid worsening of the COVID-19 situations in Brazil and Mexico, urging them to be “very serious” about halting the spread.

AFP