AUS
NZ
UK
CA
USA
IND
Summary
- The UK Government has granted Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine the Emergency Use Authorization for mass vaccination
- The Department of Health has said that the Moderna vaccine has met with the strict standards of safety, efficacy and quality of the MHRA
The UK has become the first country in the world to approve three Covid-19 vaccines in a row for emergency treatment in the country. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has given Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the potential Covid-19 developed by Moderna on 8 January.
The regulatory approval for the supply of the vaccine follows a thorough and rigorous assessment by the MHRA teams of scientists. An in-depth review of the data related to the vaccine has also been conducted by the independent Commission on Human Medicines, which has advised the same after ensuring that Moderna’s vaccine meets the required standards of effectiveness, quality and safety.
The Moderna vaccine is the second mRNA vaccine approved after Pfizer’s vaccine candidate.
Now a total of three Covid-19 vaccine candidates have been given green signal for mass usage in the UK. The first one was Pfizer and BioNtech’s that was approved on 2 December, followed by homegrown AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s vaccine, which was granted permission on 30 December.
(Image source: ©Kalkine Group 2020)
Both the vaccine candidates are already in use as nearly 1.5 million people have been vaccinated across the UK.
The Moderna’s vaccine was approved to scale up the vaccination programme in order to meet PM Boris Johnson’s target, who aims to immunise all care home patients by the end of January. The government is planning to operate 1,000 vaccination centres by 10 January.
The government has also ordered 10 million more doses of the Moderna vaccine after securing 7 million doses in the initial round, which totals to 17 million. This has been done to contribute to the mass vaccination scheme.
The Moderna jab requires a total of two doses to be administered. The Phase-3 trials of Moderna’s vaccine candidate, which was carried out on more than 30,000 people in the US, has indicated 94 per cent efficacy rate against the virus, which was almost the same as Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine.
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock has praised the approval of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine, claiming it to be another weapon in their arsenal to tame the deadly disease.
Jonathan Ashworth, Shadow Health Secretary, said the approval of the Moderna vaccine was great news and it would help in vaccinating the NHS staff on the frontline.
