Vaccine race: Moderna’s candidate 94.5% effective in early data.
Moderna’s candidate seems 94.5% effective
A second COVID-19 candidate vaccine looks to be even more effective than the first, with both protecting more than 90% of those who get the shots.
Moderna, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, announced early Monday that its candidate vaccine, MRNA-1273, developed in collaboration with the U.S. government, appears to be 94.5% effective against the disease.
Earlier this month, Pfizer and its German partner, Biontech, announced early effectiveness data showing their vaccine, called BNT162B2, had protected more than 90%.
Both results are preliminary, with final results expected in as soon as a few weeks.
“This is better than Christmas,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “The interim results of these two exciting MRNA vaccine candidates over the past week are encouraging, hopeful and move us massively forward to getting out of this pandemic.” A colleague was equally thrilled. “There’s part of me that tries to hear this as a dispassionate physician, but as a human being, this makes me giddy,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF. “You can really see the light at the end of this tunnel. It’s unbelievable.”
Moderna’s good news also proves
that Pfizer/biontech’s results were not a fluke, Wachter said.
Most of the vaccines under development target the same “spike” protein on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19. If these two are effective, Wachter said, it suggests other candidates that target the protein in different ways will also be useful.
“There’s no good reason to believe we won’t have one, two, three or four more that are equally effective,” he said.
Each trial enrolled tens of thousands of volunteers – Pfizer’s had 44,000, Moderna’s 30,000 – with researchers injecting them twice either with the candidate vaccine or a placebo and then waiting to see whether they developed COVID-19.
In Moderna’s first interim analysis, 95 people came down with COVID-19, 90
of whom received the placebo. Eleven people, all in the placebo group, developed “serious” cases of the disease. Among the 95 who fell ill, 15 were over 65 years old, 12 were Hispanic, four were Black, three were Asian, and one was self-described as multiracial, according to a company press release.
A final analysis is expected to include 151 trial volunteers, by which point, statistically, the company can be 90% sure that its findings will hold true.
With the Pfizer/biontech vaccine interim results, 94 patients developed the disease, the majority of whom had received the placebo, which is how the company calculated that it was 90% effective. The companies will do a final check of effectiveness when 164 study participants have fallen ill.