The US has a new vaccine Covid-19 that is 94.5% effective, stored in a refrigerator for up to 30 days

Another new vaccine was shown to be highly effective in preventing Covid-19. Moderna pharmaceutical company just released initial data showing that the company’s Covid-19 vaccine is 94.5% effective, slightly higher than the newly announced vaccines of Pfizer and BioNTech a few days ago. .

While the vaccine’s official data has yet to be released, its effectiveness is much higher than experts’ expectation. The US FDA says it is looking for a vaccine that is at least 50% effective.

There are no serious safety concerns about the vaccine, but many test participants reported side effects such as fatigue, headache, or pain at the injection site. They usually disappear quickly.

The first vaccine entered their testing in March, Moderna said. Just 63 days after the virus’s genome was posted online, the company administered a test shot of the vaccine to the candidates. The company says it can go that fast by using genetic engineering to make vaccines. Creating these vaccines becomes relatively simple once researchers know the gene for the virus they are targeting.

The same approach is being used by Pfizer and BioNTech for their vaccines. Genetic-based vaccines have long been seen as the future of vaccine development but have not yet been approved by the FDA for use in humans. The early successes of Pfizer and Moderna could be a promising sign of this approach.

One advantage to their vaccines, Moderna says, is storage capacity. It can be stored in a refrigerator temperature – from 2 ^o to 8 ^o C – up to 30 days. This makes it easier to store and distribute the vaccine. Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines must be stored at -70 ^° C – a real logistical challenge.

Moderna says it will have about 20 million doses of a biphasic vaccine by the end of 2020, and will have between 500 million and 1 billion doses of vaccine by 2021. The US government has an agreement with the company to There are about 100 million doses of their vaccine through “Operation Warp Speed”, a federal program to speed up the development of the Covid-19 vaccine. Besides Moderna, the US government also ordered another 600 million doses of vaccine from Pfizer, 50 million doses to be available by the end of this year. It is also a two-shot vaccine.

Refer to The Verge