Advisory Committee for FDA Recommends Authorizing Moderna’s Coronavirus Vaccine
An advisory committee for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recommended the agency authorize a second Covid-19 vaccine, this one developed by Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The recommendation paves the way for the FDA to give emergency approval for a second highly effective vaccine to be used in the US. That approval could come by the end of the week. An FDA analysis found Moderna’s vaccine is more than 94% effective at preventing Covid-19 in a trial of more than 30,000 participants.
The likely authorization of the second vaccine comes after more than 300,000 Americans have succumbed to Covid-19, in a winter-time “third wave” of the disease that is filling hospitals with patients and exhausting healthcare workers.
The recommendation comes from the FDA’s Center for Biologics and Evaluation and Research vaccine advisory committee, an independent panel of experts who last week recommended the agency authorize a vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech.
“The question is never when do you know everything, it’s when do you know enough,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine and infectious disease expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The answer to whether the advisory committee should recommend emergency authorization of the vaccine is, “Clearly, yes.”
