WASHINGTON – The United States' top infectious disease scientist has hailed early results from Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine trial as “stunningly impressive”.
Anthony Fauci called the findings an emphatic validation of experimental messenger RNA technology – which allows scientists to plan their strategies to intervene through the virus’ genomic sequence – after some had cast doubts on its efficacy, as no vaccine based on this platform has ever been approved.
Fauci told AFP that he would “have been satisfied with 70% or at the most 75% efficacy,” adding that 94.5% efficacy “is really a spectacular result” that overwhelmingly beat expectations.
Fauci leads the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which began co-developing the vaccine with the US biotech company in January, shortly after China shared the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus.
On Monday, Moderna and NIAID announced their preliminary results based on 95 of the 30,000 volunteers they had recruited who fell ill with Covid-19.
Of the 95, 90 had been in the trial's placebo group, and five in the group that received the drug, called mRNA-1273.
It follows a similarly impressive result from US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech last week, which reported an efficacy of 90% for their vaccine. – AFP, November 17, 2020
