The U.S. Will Be Authorizing a Second COVID-19 Vaccine

Feb, 2021 - By SMI

Moderna’s vaccine will soon get approval from the FDA panels and will be rolling out millions of doses keeping the frontline workers as priority.

The head of FDA (Food and Drug Administration) stated on 17th December 2020, that the agency will take quick action in authorizing the second COVID-19 vaccine, just a few hours after the first shot won the approval of a government advisory panel. According to Stephen Hahn, an FDA commissioner, the regulators have already communicated the idea of authorizing the vaccine with Moderna, a drug-making firm that co-produced the vaccine along with the National Institutes of Health. The announcement was done after an FDA advisory panel stated that the vaccine has a lot of benefits and will be safe for people above 18 years of age.

After the final FDA approval, Moderna will begin shipping of millions of doses for mainly health workers and nursing home staff and boost the largest vaccination effort ever taken in the U.S. history. The campaign became a hit earlier this week as the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech got approval to ship doses to the U.S. Modera's vaccine displayed strong effectiveness and provided 94% protection against the virus as revealed in the company's ongoing study which includes 30,000 participants. After an 8 hour-long discussion about the effectiveness of the vaccine and future plans, the FDA panel agreed to make the vaccine available for U.S. residents, though one panel member declined the proposal. 

In the holidays, the death rate in the U.S. increased making it urgent for a second vaccine to fight the spread of COVID-19. Right now, the U.S. is at top of the list with 1.6 million confirmed cases and over 310,000 death reports. Moderna's vaccine is also using the same technology as Pfizer-BioNtec' vaccine. Most vaccines use weakened and dead viruses but both COVID-19 vaccines use a small part of the virus's genetic code to enable the immune system to detect and then fight the virus. Both the vaccines require two doses; the second dose of Moderna's vaccine needs to be taken four weeks after the first one.