Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine found to be nearly 95 percent effective in a preliminary analysis

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The United States could have two coronavirus vaccines available on a limited basis by year’s end


By Carolyn Y. Johnson
November 16, 2020 at 11:25 AM EST
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Biotechnology firm Moderna announced Monday that a preliminary analysis shows its experimental coronavirus vaccine is nearly 95 percent effective at preventing illness, including severe cases — a striking initial result that leaves the United States with the prospect that two coronavirus vaccines could be available on a limited basis by the end of the year.
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The news comes a week after pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech lifted the stock market and people’s hopes with the news that their coronavirus vaccine was more than 90 percent effective. The announcement sent stocks up again, with the Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 up about 1 percent in midmorning trading. Moderna’s share price rose more than 6 percent.
At a briefing Monday, government officials predicted that if the two vaccines receive a regulatory greenlight, the first shots could be given in December, with enough to vaccinate 20 million people that month — and more becoming available into 2021 as production ramps up and other vaccine candidates may be successful.

“It’s extremely good news. If you look at the data, the numbers speak for themselves,” said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was one of three people briefed on the data by an independent committee Sunday morning. “I describe myself as a realist, but I’m fundamentally a cautious optimist. I felt we’d likely get something less than this. … I said certainly a 90-plus-percent effective vaccine is possible, but I wasn’t counting on it.”
Moderna’s vaccine, co-developed with Fauci’s institute, is being tested in 30,000 people. Half received two doses of the vaccine, and half received a placebo. To test how well the vaccine works, physicians closely monitored cases of covid-19 to see whether they predominantly occurred in people who received the placebo.
Of the 95 cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, 90 were in the group that received the placebo. There were 11 severe cases reported — all in people who received the placebo. With cases of covid-19 confined almost exclusively to trial participants receiving a placebo, that sends a strong signal that the vaccine is effective at thwarting the virus.
The data have not yet been published or peer reviewed, and the overall effectiveness of the vaccine may change as the study continues. But Fauci said the data on severe cases was “quite impressive” and effectively answers a question that has lingered: whether a vaccine measured by its success in preventing any case of covid-19 can prevent the most urgent cases, too.
An independent data committee, convened by the National Institutes of Health, analyzed the results Sunday morning. Stéphane Bancel, chief executive of Moderna, said in an interview that he spent the morning trying to distract himself from wondering about the results by working at his home in Boston, but instead he found himself constantly checking his phone and email. When he learned the results later in the morning, the evidence that the vaccine prevented severe disease stood out as most consequential.
“In this pandemic, what has been awful from a public health standpoint, an economic standpoint, is the worry people have to get so sick they have to go to the hospital — so sick they have to get to the ICU and have a high risk of dying,” Bancel said. “If a [vaccine] could prevent 95 percent of people to not get disease, but to not get severe disease, that would be a game-changer: the impact on hospitals, the impact on people’s psyche an

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