Moderna vaccine set for approval this week

A booster shot of coronavirus help is on the way.

The COVID-19 vaccine produced by Moderna is set to be approved as early as this week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a report said Tuesday.

Moderna “has provided adequate information to ensure the vaccine’s quality and consistency for authorization,” the FDA staff report said.

The new shot now goes to a committee Thursday, which is expected to give the green light for emergency use authorization by the end of the week.

That timeline should allow the freshly approved vaccine to go into the arms of Americans as early as next week.

The Moderna vaccine would allow millions of more Americans to get inoculated weeks or months faster than with just the Pfizer shot that is being rolled out already to frontline hospital workers.

The report analyzed Moderna’s successful trial, which involved 30,000 volunteers. It promises 95% protection from coronavirus after two doses, administered about a month apart.

The Moderna vaccine uses the same technology as Pfizer-BioNTech’s and showed similarly strong protection against COVID-19 but is easier to handle because it does not need to be kept in the deep freeze at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit.

A second vaccine can’t come soon enough as the country’s daily death count surpassed 300,000 on Monday based on data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, with about 2,400 people now dying per day, on average.

The devastating toll is only expected to grow in coming weeks, fueled by holiday travel, family gatherings and lax adherence to basic public health measures.