Indian govt in talks with Moderna for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate

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.

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.

A sign marks the headquarters of Moderna Therapeutics, which is developing a vaccine against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. (Reuters)

“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.