Moderna Inc's Covid-19 vaccine could be ready for widespread use by the end of this year, US and company officials said Monday, after the company announced the start of a 30,000-person trial to prove it is safe and effective, the final hurdle before regulatory approval.
The trial is the first late-stage study of its kind under the US government's program to accelerate the development of countermeasures against the coronavirus, adding to hopes that an effective vaccine will help end the pandemic. Moderna shares were up 7.5%.
The US government is supporting Moderna's vaccine project with nearly a billion dollars and has chosen it as one of the first to enter large-scale human trials.
There are more than 150 vaccine candidates at various stages of development, 23 of them in human trials worldwide. Moderna and the British AstraZeneca Plc are leading the race, as their projects are in advanced studies.
Although AstraZeneca indicated last week that it is still on track to produce doses by September, it is focusing, like other pharmaceutical companies, on delivering a fully tested vaccine by the end of the year at the earliest.
"Having a safe and effective vaccine that can be distributed by the end of 2020 is a difficult goal, but it is the right goal for the American people," said National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins in a statement announcing the start of the phase III study.
Pharmaceutical companies are ramping up production while conducting tests to respond as quickly as possible to the virus, which continues to spread rapidly around the world. Covid-19 has caused nearly 650,000 deaths worldwide and infected more than 16 million people.
Moderna could have tens of millions of doses ready in case the vaccine is deemed safe and effective, Collins added in a virtual conference with reporters.
Moderna said it plans to deliver about 500 million doses a year, and possibly up to a billion doses a year from 2021. (Rts)
