PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) -- Top FDA officials say they will soon be authorizing the coronavirus vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, following a recommendation Thursday from a panel of experts. This puts the United States on the verge of having its second vaccine in the fight to end the pandemic.
Emergency authorization could come as soon as Friday, after the same group of vaccine experts that recommended the Pfizer vaccine a week ago voted 20 to 0 that the benefts of the Moderna vaccine outweighs the risks of giving it to adults.
With FDA authorization, Moderna will begin shipping millions of doses, earmarked for health workers and nursing home residents, to boost the largest vaccination effort in U.S. history.
Moderna's clinical trials, which include 30,000 people, show 94% effectiveness. The most common side effects are headache, fatigue and muscle soreness.
Related
This second vaccine will be easier to store than the first. It requires a temperature of -4 degrees Fahrenheit, much different from the -94 degrees for the Pfizer vaccine.
Moderna’s vaccine uses the same groundbreaking technology as the Pfizer shot. Most traditional vaccines use dead or weakened virus, but both of the new vaccines use snippets of COVID-19’s genetic code to train the immune system to detect and fight the virus. Both require two doses -- for Moderna's, four weeks apart, and for Pfizer's, three weeks.
Related
This second vaccine comes at a critical point in the pandemic, with coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths climbing to new heights ahead of the winter holidays. The U.S. leads the world in virus totals, with more than 1.6 million confirmed cases and more than 310,000 reported deaths.
If approval and distribution follows a similar timeline as that of the Pfizer vaccine, those first in line may start receiving it by early next week.