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Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine became the second candidate to get emergency use authorization (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday, December 18.
Health Canada, the Canadian drug regulator, is yet to authorize Moderna's vaccine. Canada is expected to get about 168,000 injections of Moderna's vaccine, which will be available for rollout across the country by the end of this month. It will be interesting to watch whether Health Canada will approve Moderna shot in the coming week and joins the FDA’s league .
Moderna’s vaccine has an efficacy rate of 94.5 per cent. Nearly 100 million to 125 million vaccine doses will available globally in the first quarter of 2021, said the company.
Reports claimed that the Canadian government is making arrangements to ship Moderna’s vaccine doses across the country, a sign that the Health Canada may soon approve it.
Canada officially kicked off its COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Monday this week, after the first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in the country a day ago. The jab was administered to frontline health care workers and elderly people.
@Kalkine Image 2020
The US has already ordered 200 million of doses of Moderna vaccine jab, of which nearly 20 million doses will be delivered by December-end. About 85 million to 100 million doses will be available in the U.S. by the first quarter of 2021. The rollout will start this week among healthcare personnel. Elderly people are next in line to get vaccinated as per U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experts’ recommendation on December 13. The U.S. government can order an additional 300 million doses, as per its agreement with the drug maker.
The US provided the authorization, a day after the FDA’s panel of external experts endorsed its use. The development comes a week after the agency approved Pfizer Inc-BioNTech’s vaccine candidate.
The vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech has been injected into the arms of thousands of healthcare employees this week in a huge nationwide vaccination drive. Moderna shots are expected to commence in the coming days for adults 18 years old and above.
