INDIA IN TALKS WITH MODERNA AFTER IT ANNOUNCES 94.5% COVID EFFECTIVENESS

The Indian government is in dialogue with US biotech giant Moderna, regarding initial successful development of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, which the drugmaker on Monday announced had achieved 94.5 per cent efficacy in phase 3 trials.

“The government is in dialogue with both domestic and international vaccine manufacturers. Not only with Moderna—the government is also in communication with Pfizer, Serum Institute, Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila for their Covid-19 vaccine candidate in terms of safety, immunogenicity and efficacy,” a senior government official said.

The pharma giant Moderna announced on Monday that its coronavirus vaccine was 94.5 per cent effective, based on early results from its large ongoing study.

“The NIH-appointed Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for the Phase 3 study of mRNA-1273, its vaccine candidate against COVID-19, has informed Moderna that the trial has met the statistical criteria pre-specified in the study protocol for efficacy, with a vaccine efficacy of 94.5 per cent,” Moderna said in a statement.

This announcement follows that by US giant Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech last week that their vaccine was found to be more than 90 per cent effective.

“This is a pivotal moment in the development of our Covid-19 vaccine candidate. Since early January, we have chased this virus with the intent to protect as many people around the world as possible,” said Stephane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer at Moderna.

“All along, we have known that each day matters. This positive interim analysis from our Phase 3 study has given us the first clinical validation that our vaccine can prevent the Covid-19 disease, including severe disease,” Bancel added.

The US is working with a portfolio of six vaccines, using three different platform technologies and two candidates from each platform: Messenger RNA, live viral vectors and recombinant protein.

Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines use the messenger RNA platform, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca in partnership with Oxford University are on the live vector path while Novavax and Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline are building out their vaccine candidates on the recombinant protein platform.

WITH AGENCY INPUTS