The biotech firm Moderna has announced that it’s finalized the initial tests for its Covid-19 candidate, reporting an efficacy rate of 94.1% against normal cases and 100% against severe cases. The freshly reported results don’t deviate much from the 94.5% efficacy rate whichit posted from its ongoing tests earlier this month.

Having finalized its initial tests, Moderna has said that it’ll submit requests for approval to US and UK medical regulators on Monday, paving the way for the potential adoption of its vaccine. The company will also submit the data from its vaccine study for a peer-reviewed publication.

Moderna will request what’s known as Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Conditional Marketing Authorization (CMA) from the European Medicines Agency. With its request, the company’s vaccine will be subject to review from both agencies, whereas it says it expects the FDA to schedule its review for Thursday, the 17th of December.

To distribute its vaccine candidate, Moderna is working together with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the pharmaceutical company McKesson which has been contracted by the US government to distribute vaccines. The company is also working with UK agencies, wherein the country recently booked 7 million vaccine doses from Moderna.

Moderna says it expects to have 20 million doses ready for the US by this year’s end if the FDA authorizes its use. Overall, it plans to produce between 500 million to 1 billion doses annually beginning next year.

Moderna is one out of several medical companies that’s developing Covid-19 vaccines, whereas others also doing so include Pfizer, which recently posted a 95% efficacy rate from its tests, and AstraZeneca, which posted an average efficacy rate of 70% from its own tests.

Photo: Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel by World Economic Forum is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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