- General
- December 19, 2020
- 4 minutes read
US Greenlights Moderna’s Covid-19 Vaccine
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Covid-19 vaccine developed by…
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Moderna, the company has announced. It makes Moderna the second company to get a Covid-19 vaccine approved for use in the US, the other being Pfizer.
Under an Emergency Use Authorization, Moderna will begin distributing its vaccine for use and says 20 million doses will be delivered by the end of this month. The US Government is Moderna’s first and main customer, having bestowed it with a $1.5 billion vaccine supply deal this August.
Another major customer is the European Commission, which has ordered 160 million vaccine doses from Moderna.
Altogether, Moderna has secured orders for over 470 million vaccine doses from countries including the US, EU nations, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, UK, Israel, Qatar, and Singapore.
Moderna expects to deliver 20 million vaccine doses to the US government by the end of this year and supply between 85-100 million doses in the first quarter of next year. Distribution across the US will be managed by the Department of Defense (DoD) in partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Moderna’s FDA approval brings good fortunes for the company, given that the mRNA-based vaccine is the company’s first major commercial product since it was founded 10 years ago. Before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, Moderna was a company working on developing drugs and vaccines based exclusively on the relatively new messenger RNA (mRNA) system but hadn’t come up with a commercial product yet.
Now, Moderna has found its first calling in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, a calling that has widely boosted the company’s reputation and will likely unlock further opportunities for it over time.
Notably, the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) given by the FDA isn’t final and places Moderna under close watch by the agency. Moderna says it’ll further request full licensure for its Covid vaccine next year.
