Moderna’s vaccine will be reviewed Thursday by the same panel of independent experts who last week recommended the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The data it will consider echoes the evidence that led to a 17 to 4 vote to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was 95 percent effective. An advantage of the Moderna vaccine, he pointed out, will be its simpler logistics, because it does not require specialized ultracold storage conditions like the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Nearly 100 medical sites are beginning phase 3 of coronavirus vaccines, which require participants to test particular possible vaccines. One of the major outstanding questions about this and other coronavirus vaccines is whether they prevent infection, as well as disease.

Source: Washington Post December 15, 2020 13:08 UTC