US biotech company Moderna has said it will apply for emergency authorisation of its Covid-19 vaccine in the US and Europe.
It comes after trial results published by the company on Monday suggested the jab has a 94.1% efficacy rate – and a 100% success rate protecting against “severe Covid-19”.
Moderna said it would request ‘emergency use authorisation’ from the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) for the coronavirus vaccine, as well as conditional approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
“We believe that we have a vaccine that is very highly efficacious,” Moderna’s chief medical officer Dr Tal Zaks told the Reuters news agency. “We expect to be playing a major part in turning around this pandemic.”
Zaks told reporters he was emotional after seeing the 94.1% result over the weekend.
“It was the first time I allowed myself to cry. At this level of effectiveness, when you just do the math of what it means for the pandemic that’s raging around us, it’s just overwhelming.”
News of Moderna’s plans comes the day after the UK government announced it had secured another 2m doses of the Moderna vaccine, bringing the country’s total to 7m doses – enough to vaccinate around 3.5m people.
However, the trial vaccine must first be authorised for use in the UK before it can be rolled out.
If it is approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the Moderna vaccine could start to be delivered to the UK as early as spring 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care has said.
A spokesperson for the government said: “This is more promising news from Moderna. We were one of the first countries in Europe to agree a deal with them, pre-ordering 7 million doses of this vaccine, as part of our wider portfolio of 357 million doses that we have secured from seven different vaccine developers.
“Once the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) receives the full data from the company, it will begin to carry out its crucial, independent work to assess whether the vaccine meets robust standards of safety, effectiveness and quality.”
The government has already formally asked the MHRA to decide whether it will authorise the Oxford University/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/Biotech vaccines for temporary use.