Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Gets Key Endorsement From FDA Advisory Panel

A second vaccine is set to join the U.S. vaccination campaign after a government advisory panel endorsed Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seen to follow the endorsement with a recommendation and quickly approve the Moderna vaccine, which is co-developed with the National Institutes of Health, as reported by the Associated Press.

FDA advisers decided after they determined that the benefits of the Moderna vaccine outweighed the risks. Moderna can start shipping millions of doses after an emergency use authorization is granted by the FDA.

Moderna can also start allotting doses for health workers and nursing home residents to help boost the largest vaccination campaign in the United States' history.

COVID-19 Vaccine

The vaccination campaign has already started earlier this week with the first vaccine, developed by Pfizer and German firm BioNTech, to get a go-signal.

Moderna's dose has shown similar strong effectiveness, with 94 percent protection against COVID-19 based on the company's ongoing study involving 30,000 people.

About all panelists supported making the vaccine available to curb the further spread of the pandemic. However, one-panel member abstained after seven hours of debate over technical details of the company's study and plans.

Dr. Hayley Gans of Stanford University Medical Center said that the evidence that has been studied in great detail on the vaccine highly outweighs any of the issues they have seen.

Meanwhile, the Moderna vaccine can be distributed more widely as it can be stored at normal freezer temperatures.

Unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, it does not require ultracold storage to be preserved, according to a The New York Times report. It also comes in much smaller batches, making it easier for hospitals in less populated areas to use quickly.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, North Carolina's secretary of health and human services, said that the Moderna vaccine could go to more places.

"We hope to be in all 100 counties with some amount of vaccine - small allocations at first - by the end of next week, assuming Moderna gets approved this week and we get our allocations delivered over the course of next week," Cohen said in the NY Times report.

Despite the minimal complications in moving this vaccine, Moderna does not have a track record when it comes to mass production, according to an NPR report.

Moderna also never had a product with FDA approval despite being founded a decade ago and making hundreds of medicines and vaccines.

Moderna's CEO Stéphane Bancel said he is always thinking about the "next game," adding that it is the manufacturing. Bancel said this is a big week at the FDA, but he is not worried about the approval of emergency use authorization because data is data.

The firm's CEO added that he is more worried about making more vaccines. Moderna earlier said it is using a relatively new facility in Norwood, Massachusetts to make the vaccine.

Moderna co-founder Noubar Afeyan said that the vast majority of the U.S. production would be done in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on Thursday that his agency would move quickly to authorize Moderna.

After the FDA approval, government officials target distributing an initial shipment of almost six million Moderna doses. They expect about 20 million Americans to get their first shots by the end of this month and 30 million more in January.

Related story: FDA Scientists Endorse Moderna's COVID-19 Vaccine for Emergency Use