An expert advisory committee voted on Thursday, December 17, to recommend the emergency authorization in the United States of the Covid-19 vaccine from the company Moderna, paving the way for the delivery of doses from this weekend .
After this non-binding opinion, it will be up to the US Medicines Agency (Food and Drug Administration, FDA) to grant the green light, which should intervene very quickly and would make Moderna the second vaccine to be authorized in a Western country. .
The opinion was given by 20 votes in favor, none against, with only one abstention. The question asked was: “Based on all the available scientific evidence, do the benefits of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine outweigh the risks of its use in people 18 years of age and older? “
After the recommendation of the same committee to authorize a first vaccine, that of Pfizer / BioNTech, the FDA gave it the green light the next day.
200 million pre-purchased doses
Like Pfizer’s, the vaccine will not be recommended for people who may develop allergic reactions. Both vaccines are based on a new technology, messenger RNA, and allergic reactions have been observed in two people who received the vaccine from Pfizer in the UK, and two others in the US.
Moderna, a young Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, filed for emergency clearance only two and a half weeks ago.
She began work on her vaccine in January 2019, in collaboration with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), and has received support of $ 2.5 billion in public money to do so.
The US government has pre-purchased 200 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine (100 million from Pfizer).
The European Medicines Agency advances its decision
In Europe, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced Thursday that it would advance by one week, to January 6, the review and possible authorization of the Moderna vaccine.
The American designers of this vaccine having sent additional data faster than expected, the AEM will therefore meet on January 6 in session “Extraordinary”, i.e. six days before the date originally scheduled for January 12, for “Make its conclusions, if possible”, said the European institution, based in Amsterdam.
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