Home News Covid-19 Vaccine: European Union Considers Approving Moderna Shot

Covid-19 Vaccine: European Union Considers Approving Moderna Shot

Covid-19 Vaccine: European Union Considers Approving Moderna Shot

Days after the European Union granted emergency use authorisation for Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, the 27-nation bloc’s top drugs regulator will meet on Wednesday to consider granting a similar license to Moderna Inc’s Covid-19 vaccine.

The meeting comes at a times when the European Union (EU) has been criticised by various quarters for delaying the Covid-19 vaccination programme. Rising number of Coronavirus infections in the region, has also been a cause of worry for the EU.

Ahead of the meeting to discuss the Moderna vaccine, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said in a tweet that its experts were “working hard to clarify all outstanding issues with the company.” It did not elaborate on what those issues were. Moderna also declined to comment.

Early results of large, still unfinished studies show both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines appear safe and offer strong protection, although Moderna’s is easier to handle since it doesn’t need to be stored at ultra-frozen temperatures.

The United States, Canada and Israel have already approved use of the Moderna vaccine. The US approved it for emergency use in people over 18 years on December 18, followed by Canada five days later with an interim authorization also for people over 18. Israel authorised the vaccine on Monday.

If the EU agency joins the list, its decision will have to be confirmed by the bloc’s executive commission in Brussels before vaccinations with the Moderna shot can begin.

Moderna said Monday that it is increasing its estimate for global vaccine production in 2021 from 500 to 600 million doses. The company said it is “continuing to invest and add staff to build up to potentially 1 billion doses for 2021.”

Both Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s shots are mRNA vaccines, made with a ground breaking new technology. They don’t contain any coronavirus – meaning they cannot cause infection. Instead, they use a piece of genetic code that trains the immune system to recognize the spike protein on the surface of the virus, ready to attack if the real thing comes along.

The EU officially began giving out Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination shots on December 27, but the speed of each nation’s inoculation programme has varied widely. France vaccinated around 500 people in the first week, while Germany vaccinated 200,000. The Dutch were only beginning to give out vaccine shots Wednesday, the last EU nation to start doing so.


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