THE United States has authorized a second vaccine against the coronavirus for emergency use, with shipments starting to arrive this week.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday, December 18, granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) to Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine a day after the agency’s advisory panel endorsed it as safe and effective.
“With the availability of two vaccines now for the prevention of COVID-19, the FDA has taken another crucial step in the fight against this global pandemic that is causing vast numbers of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States each day,” FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn, M.D. said in a statement.
Moderna’s vaccine has a 94.5% efficacy rate, occurring at least 14 days after the second dose. It is authorized to be distributed in the U.S. for use in individuals 18 years of age and older, following Pfizer’s vaccine, which began its national rollout last week.
Both pharmaceutical firms utilize the new messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology for their vaccines.
“Through the FDA’s open and transparent scientific review process, two COVID-19 vaccines have been authorized in an expedited timeframe while adhering to the rigorous standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization that the American people have come to expect from the FDA,” said Hahn.
“These standards and our review process, which are the same we have used in reviewing the first COVID-19 vaccine and intend to use for any other COVID-19 vaccines, included input from independent scientific and public health experts as well as a thorough analysis of the data by the agency’s career staff,” he added.
U.S. President Donald Trump, for his part, lauded the authorization.
“Congratulations, the Moderna vaccine is now available!” he said in a tweet.
Likewise, President-elect Joe Biden hailed the FDA’s decision.
According to him, the authorization of the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines “assures us that brighter days lie ahead,” but stressed that the fight against COVID-19 is not over yet.
“We know the immense challenges ahead, including scaling up manufacturing, distribution, and the monumental task of vaccinating hundreds of millions of Americans.
We need to make sure we have the resources to do all of this and to do it quickly,” said Biden.
The U.S. has agreed to purchase 200 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, of which 5.9 million doses are already ready to ship nationwide.
The country expects to have 40 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines by the end of the year, enough to vaccinate 20 million people.
Over 17.8 million people in the U.S. have been infected by COVID-19 since the beginning of the outbreak, resulting in a total of 317,684 deaths.
30M doses of Novavax vaccine
The Philippines, meanwhile, has been assured of 30 million doses of Indian-made Novavax COVID-19 vaccine, which may be expected to be available in July 2021.
“Thirty million dosages of the Indian-made Novavax vaccines are assured, possibly with no cash advance. It will be available by July 2021,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. announced Monday, December 21.
“The term sheet might be signed before the year ends. The good thing though, remember this is not a rumor, is that this is based on a press release made by Serum Institute of India (SII), the giant manufacturer,” he added.
So far, the Philippines has secured over two million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with the help of the private sector. The country is also looking into purchasing 25 million doses of a vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech, as well as securing four to 25 million doses of vaccines from Moderna and Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings Inc.
The Philippines currently has the second-highest number of COVID-19 infections and fatalities in Southeast Asia, with 461,505 cases and 8,957 deaths.
