Coronavirus vaccine update: After Pfizer, Modernica claims that its vaccine is 94.5 % effective in preventing Covid-19

Covid-19 vaccine update: In a positive development in the search for the Coronavirus vaccine, US pharma company Modernica has said that its experimental vaccine is about 94.5 percent effective in preventing Coronavirus infection, news agency Reuters claimed. In a formal statement, the company said that based on the interim data from a late stage trial, the vaccine is close to 95 percent effective in preventing the Coronavirus. The development makes Modernica the second pharma company which has been successful in developing an effective Coronavirus vaccine after another U.S pharma company Pfizer claimed that its vaccine candidate had been 90 percent effective in its late-phase trials

Moderna President Stephen Hoge told Reuters that the world was going to have an effective Coronavirus vaccine soon that will put an end to the spread of Coronavirus. Hoge also said that the results were based on the interim analysis of more than 95 infections among the trial participants who had been provided with either a placebo or the vaccine.

Independent observers also expressed happiness over the results announced by the American manufacturing company. Peter Openshaw, who is a professor of experimental medicine at the Imperial College London told Reuters that the news shared by Modernica was very exciting and in the next few months, the world would have a decent choice when it comes to selecting the Coronavirus vaccine. The latest press release covered about 30,000 participants which included old age and high risk patients.

In the wake of the positive results, the shares of the manufacturer in the U.S share market registered a sudden spike of about 9.1 percent in the pre-market trading. With effective clinical data on its hands, the company is expected to apply for the U.S authorisation by the next week and also seek the Emergency Use Authorisation from the U.S authorities.

Earlier, Pfizer Inc had also claimed that its Coronavirus vaccine candidate was about 90 percent effective in preventing Covid-19. With two leading vaccine manufacturers in the United States getting successful in developing effective Covid-19 vaccines, the U.S government is looking at the possibility of procuring about 60 million doses by the end of the year itself, according to the Reuters report.

Both the successful vaccine candidates — Modernica’s as well as Pfizer’s — have been developed with a new technology called messenger RNA (mRNA) and these two vaccine manufacturers alone would be more than enough to provide a vaccine for about 330 million residents of the country by next year.