COVID-19 vaccine by US’ Moderna ‘95% effective’

A COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Moderna, a US company, has proved to be 95 percent effective against the infection. 

According to the BBC, early data from the company showed the efficacy of the experimental vaccine.

This development comes a few days after Pfizer announced that a vaccine it is developing against COVID-19 is 90 percent effective.

Moderna’s trial of the vaccine reportedly involved 30,000 subjects in the US — with half being given two doses of the vaccine, four weeks apart, and the rest given placebos.

The company was reported to have said it planned to seek approval to commence use of the vaccine in the next few weeks.

According to the BBC report, the analysis was based on the first 95 to develop COVID-19 symptoms.

It said only five of the COVID-19 cases were in people given the vaccine, 90 were in those given the dummy treatment.

The data also reportedly shows there were 11 cases of severe COVID-19 in the trial, but none was said to have happened in people who were vaccinated.

“The overall effectiveness has been remarkable… it’s a great day,” Tal Zaks, the chief medical officer at Moderna, was quoted to have told BBC News.

But there is yet no data to show how long the potency of the vaccine will last and its effectiveness in older people.

No safety concerns have reportedly been raised so far.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 54 million people have contracted the infection globally while more than one million people have died from complications arising from the virus.