The Food and Drug Administration reported they evaluated the data on Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine and declared it safe. The vaccine could be approved later this week.
The FDA had little concerns with the safety and “identified that would preclude issuance of an EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) and confirmed an overall efficacy of 94.1 percent” in extreme cases.
The Pfizer-BioNtech COVID vaccine started rolling out across the country on Monday. The Pfizer plant in Portage, Mich., loaded an estimated 3 million doses onto trucks for shipment.
“In parallel to working with regulators around the globe to make our vaccine available, we will continue to share important data from our ongoing studies with the global scientific community and the public in order to advance our collective understanding of the underlying vaccine mechanism of action,” said Ugur Sahin, M.D., CEO and Co-Founder of BioNTech in a press release on Dec. 14.
The FDA’s decision to “fast track” the vaccine’s status is another tool in the fight against the pandemic.