Moderna Covid-19 vaccine: UK Government in ‘advanced discussions’ to get US jab after early results show nearly 95% effectiveness

- UK scientists have hailed the results as ‘remarkable’- Moderna’s president said the jab is 100% effective at preventing severe Covid-19 cases- The jab has been found to show no serious side-effects after being tested on 30,000 people

A new coronavirus vaccine may prevent 94.5 per cent of people from contracting Covid-19, it has been revealed.

Interim data from the US firm Moderna suggests its jab works across all age groups, including the elderly.

The UK has not confirmed an order for the vaccine – which works in a similar way to Pfizer’s. However, a Whitehall source said the Government was “in advanced discussions” to procure doses .

Scientists said the news bodes well for other vaccines, with Oxford University and British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca due to report results from their own trials in the coming days.

The announcement comes one week after BioNTech and co-developers Pfizer revealed that their candidate had been found to be more than 90 per cent effective.

Responding to the latest development, Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, said: “This news from Moderna is tremendously exciting and considerably boosts optimism that we will have a choice of good vaccines in the next few months.

“First we heard 90 per cent efficacy from Pfizer and BioNTech, then the Russians said 92 per cent and now Moderna says 94.5 per cent.

“This latest press release is based on a study of 30,000 US adults, including many high-risk or elderly persons.

“This gives us confidence that the results are relevant in the people who are most at risk of Covid-19 and in most need of the vaccines.

“Moderna have also announced that the vaccine can be kept in a conventional freezer (-20C) for up to six months, and that once thawed the vaccine can be kept for up to 30 days at standard refrigerator (2 to 8C). This makes the vaccine much easier to deliver.”

Moderna’s final-stage clinical trial is ongoing but the firm said its available data does not indicate any significant safety concerns.

The vaccine was generally well-tolerated, and the majority of adverse events were mild or moderate in severity, it said.

Severe events after the first dose included injection site pain and after the second dose included fatigue, myalgia (muscle pain), arthralgia (joint pain), headache, pain, and redness at the injection site.

But these effects of the injection were generally short-lived, Moderna said.

The 94.5 per cent effectiveness from this analysis could drop as further results from the clinical trial are announced.

The firm’s President Dr Stephen Hoge said he “grinned ear to ear” when learning of the vaccine’s results.

He told BBC News: “When we got the news from the data and safety monitoring board, I’ll admit I broke character and grinned ear to ear for a minute.

“Because I didn’t expect, I don’t think any of us really hoped that the vaccine would be 94 per cent effective at preventing Covid-19 disease, that was really a stunning realisation.

“But the second thing that was perhaps even more exciting was that it was 100 per cent effective, apparently, at preventing severe Covid-19 disease.

He continued: “When you combine it with the news of last week of Pfizer’s vaccine, you’ve got now two vaccines that are over 90 per cent effective.

“It really means I think we have the tools necessary to finally beat this virus back and I think that’s probably the best news of the day for all of us, is that there really are now solutions in our hands and we need to deliver them to the people who can use them.”

At the end of October, Moderna announced that the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has started the rolling review process of its vaccine.

This means the MHRA will review data as it becomes available from ongoing studies, with the ability to at some point say whether the vaccine should be licensed in the UK.

Moderna intends to submit an application for an Emergency Use Authorisation with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shortly and will provide further data on the vaccine’s effectiveness and safety.

The Government has confirmed that it is vying to “ensure UK access" to the vaccine, but said any doses would not be available until Spring 2021 “at the earliest”.

“The news from Moderna appears to be good and represents another significant step towards finding an effective Covid-19 vaccine,” a Downing Street spokesperson said.

“As part of the ongoing work of the Vaccines Taskforce, the Government is in advanced discussions with Moderna to ensure UK access to their vaccine as part of the wider UK portfolio.

“Moderna are currently scaling up their European supply chain which means these doses would become available in spring 2021 in the UK at the earliest.

“To date, the UK government has secured early access to 350 million vaccines doses through agreements with six separate vaccine developers.

“This includes 40m doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine, which is based on the same platform as Moderna’s vaccine and if approved by the medicines regulator, is expected to begin delivery as early as December 2020.”

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Professor Trudie Lang, who runs the Global Health Network at the University of Oxford, described Moderna’s results as “remarkable”.

Speaking to BBC News she said she had worked on malaria, TB and Ebola vaccines but “we’ve not seen anything like this before”.

Commenting with reference to the previous announcement over the effective Pfizer vaccine, Prof Lang said: “Having data from two different vaccines, the same technology on two completely different trials, but showing the same outcomes is really exciting.”

Asked how the vaccine progress had come about, she said: “The reason why we are in such a good situation with Covid is we’ve just had this enormous collaboration and global focus.”

However, she added, the world needs to “wait and see” what the final Pfizer and Moderna data show.

She added: “We don’t fully know yet what sort of protection these vaccines are going to give, whether they’re going to prevent illness and stop transmission or both and it could be that some of the vaccines that come along later, do a slightly different job.

“So until we really have a full understanding of that, which we won’t over the next coming months, then the health authorities can make a decision on which vaccine to use most appropriately in different situations.”

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