A new vaccine that protects against Covid-19 is nearly 95% effective, early data from US company Moderna shows.
The breakthrough news comes just one week after German company BioNTech and the US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer announced to worldwide acclaim that their vaccine demonstrates 90% efficacy.
Today, Moderna has announced their vaccination offers 95% protection against Covid-19 — the novel virus which has seen 54.6M cases and 1.32M deaths worldwide, at the time of publishing.
A UK Government spokesperson said today: “The news from Moderna appears to be good and represents another significant step towards finding an effective COVID19 vaccine. 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.”
Additional information
We will know whether the vaccine meets robust standards of safety and effectiveness once their safety data has been published, and only then can the medicines regulator can consider whether it can be made it available to the public
We have secured early access to over 350 million vaccines doses through agreements with several separate vaccine developers at various stages of trials, including:
- 100 million doses of University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – phase 3 clinical trials
- 40 million doses of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine – phase 3 clinical trials
- 60 million doses of Novavax vaccine – phase 3 clinical trials
- 60 million doses of Valneva vaccine – pre-clinical trials
- 60 million doses of GSK/Sanofi Pasteur vaccine – phase 1 clinical trials
- 30 million doses of Janssen vaccine – phase 2 clinical trials
We have invested over £230m into manufacturing any successful vaccine and an enormous amount of planning and preparation has taken place across Government to be able to quickly roll out the vaccine, including ensuring we have adequate provision, transport, PPE and logistical expertise to do so. We are also working at pace to prepare for the delivery of any potential COVID-19 vaccination programme as quickly as possible.
A summary put forward by Health Secretary via the BBC, Matt Hancock can be found here.
