Second COVID-19 vaccine set for approval in US with panel endorsement

WASHINGTON » A government advisory panel endorsed a second COVID-19 vaccine Thursday, paving the way for the shot to be added to the U. S. vaccination campaign.

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to follow the recommendation and quickly OK the vaccine from Moderna and the National Institutes of Health. The FDA advisers, in a 20- 0 vote, agreed the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks for those 18 years old and up.

Once emergency use authorization is granted, Moderna will begin shipping millions of doses, earmarked for health workers and nursing home residents, to boost the largest vaccination effort in U. S. history.

The campaign kicked off earlier this week with the first vaccine OK’d in the U. S., developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. Moderna’s shot showed similarly strong effectiveness, providing 94% protection against COVID-19 in the company’s ongoing study of 30,000 people.

After seven hours of debate over technical details of the company’s study and follow-up plans, nearly all panelists backed making the vaccine available to help fight the pandemic. One panel member abstained.

“The evidence that has been studied in great detail on this vaccine highly outweighs any of the issues we’ve seen,” said Dr. Hayley Gans of Stanford University Medical Center.

A second vaccine is urgently needed as coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths climb to new highs ahead of the holidays. The U.S. leads the world in virus totals, with more than 1.6 million confirmed cases and more than 310,000 reported deaths.

Moderna’s vaccine uses the same groundbreaking technology as Pfizer- BioNTech’s shot. Most traditional vaccines use dead or weakened virus, but both of the new vaccines use snippets of COVID-19’s genetic code to train the immune system to detect and fight the virus. Both require two doses; Moderna’s is four weeks apart.

The two new vaccines will hopefully help “break the back of the pandemic,” said Dr. Arnold Monto of the University of Michigan, who chaired the panel.