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A second COVID-19 vaccine now also appears highly effective in preventing illness following exposure to the virus that causes the disease.
The biotech company Moderna, Inc., said Monday that its experimental vaccine was 94.5% effective in preventing disease, according to an analysis of its clinical trial.
The news comes a week after Pfizer and BioNTech said their vaccine was more than 90% effective.
The results for both vaccines come from interim analyses of large clinical studies. In the Moderna study there were 30,000 volunteers. Half got two doses of the vaccine 28 days apart, half got two shots of a placebo on the same schedule.
There were 95 instances of COVID-19 illness among the study participants — only five of those cases were in the vaccinated group. Ninety were in the group receiving the placebo. Of these, there were 11 cases of severe disease. The results indicate the vaccine was inducing the kind of immune response that protects people if they were exposed to the coronavirus.
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The vaccines also differ in their storage requirements. Moderna says its vaccine can be safely stored in freezers at about 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 degrees Celsius), a temperature easily reached by a home refrigerator freezer. Pfizer’s vaccine required storage in specialized ultracold freezers capable of cooling below -94 degrees Fahrenheit (-70 degrees Celsius). Moderna also says its vaccine will remain potent for up to 30 days at normal refrigerated temperatures, which should ease distribution.
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Article URL : https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/16/935239294/modernas-covid-19-vaccine-shines-in-clinical-trial