Moderna says its covid vaccine is 94.5pc effective

The US pharmaceutical firm Moderna announced on Monday a 94.5 effective covid vaccine based on preliminary tests among 30,000 participants. Last week, another American firm Pfizer reported 90pc success. Moderna’s president Dr Stephen Hoge welcomed the “really important milestone,” saying that having similar results from two different companies is what is most reassuring. “It won’t be Moderna alone that solves this problem. It’s going to require many vaccines to meet the global demand, he said, and expects to have about 20 million doses for the US by the end of this year.

Israel already has contracts with Moderna and Pfizer as well as Arcturus, the third company in the race for a coronavirus vaccine.

Like Pfizer, Moderna is confident of receiving emergency use approval for its vaccine from the US Food and Drug Administration next month. Both vaccines require two shots per person, several weeks apart, and both are based on the novel mRNA technology that is not made with the coronavirus but contains a piece of genetic code that trains the immune system to recognize the spiked protein on the surface of the virus.