“This is a pivotal moment in the development of our COVID-19 vaccine candidate,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. “Since early January, we have chased this virus with the intent to protect as many people around the world as possible. All along, we have known that each day matters.”
Moderna announced Monday morning that its coronavirus vaccine candidate was 94.5 percent effective in an interim analysis, a second promising data point in the push for a successful vaccine.
The announcement comes one week after Pfizer announced its vaccine was over 90 percent effective, meaning there are now two vaccines with very high levels of efficacy in interim analyses of clinical trial data.
Moderna based its data on a large clinical study involving 30,000 volunteers, half of whom received two doses of the vaccine over a 28-day period. There were 95 cases of coronavirus recorded among participants, with only 5 of them in the group receiving the vaccine.
