Moderna's Vaccine Effectiveness Drops Marginally

The ongoing Phase 3 clinical trial in the US have shown Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine to be 90 per cent effective against all cases of COVID-19 infection.

Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine is found to be 90 percent effective against all cases of COVID-19, and greater than 95 percent against severe cases, as per the results of the US trial.

While the updated cases show continued strong efficacy of the vaccine, the efficacy represents a marginal drop from an earlier figure of 94.1 percent published in The New England Journal of Medicine in December.

‘Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine efficacy shows a marginal drop from an earlier figure of 94.1 percent to 90 percent in the US trial.’
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The ongoing study involves more than 30,000 people across the US.

The new results are based on 900 adjudicated cases of COVID-19 as of April 9, Moderna said on Tuesday.

The previous study was based on 185 cases.

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The US-based biotechnology company also said that results from a preclinical study of its Covid-19 variant-specific vaccine candidates showed that the variant-specific booster vaccine candidates (mRNA-1273.351 and mRNA-1273.211) increase neutralizing titers against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern.

"The Moderna team continues to make important progress with our COVID-19 vaccine. We are looking forward to having the clinical data from our variant-specific booster candidates, as well as clinical data from the Phase 2/3 study of our COVID-19 Vaccine in adolescents," Stephane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna, said in a statement.

"The new preclinical data on our variant-specific vaccine candidates give us confidence that we can proactively address emerging variants. Moderna will make as many updates to our Covid-19 vaccine as necessary until the pandemic is under control."

Moderna has so far delivered approximately 132 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine globally.

New preclinical data on the company's variant-specific booster vaccine candidates have been submitted as a preprint to bioRxiv and will be submitted for peer-reviewed publication, Moderna said.

These variant-specific vaccine candidates include mRNA-1273.351, which is more specifically targeted against the SARS-CoV-2 variant known as B.1.351 first identified in South Africa, and a multivalent booster candidate, mRNA-1273.211, which combines mRNA-1273 (Moderna's authorised vaccine against ancestral strains) and mRNA-1273.351 in a single vaccine.

Source-IANS