Moderna Says COVID-19 Vaccine Worked in Monkeys
- by Joy Garcia
- in Medicine
- — Jul 31, 2020
"This decision reflects our primary goal to bring a well-tolerated, highly effective vaccine to the market as quickly as possible, while we will continue to evaluate our other vaccine candidates as part of a differentiated COVID-19 vaccine portfolio".
Mr Dmitriev said he got vaccinated and his 74-year old parents, who are molecular biologists, chose to as well, out of scientific curiosity.
"We selected BNT162b2 as our lead candidate for this Phase 2/3 trial upon diligent evaluation of the totality of the data generated so far", Dr. Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech, said.
At a meeting chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova singled out two vaccines under development by a research institute in Moscow and a lab in Siberia. Pfizer and BioNTech's first vaccine targeted a piece of the spike protein, a structure the virus uses to infect human cells.
Speaking at the worldwide symposium on Novel Ideas in Science and Ethics of Vaccines against COVID-19 pandemic, Bhushan said these questions are now being discussed by the policymakers within the Government of India.
Meanwhile, Moderna has also begun a phase-3 clinical trial to evaluate mRNA-1273 vaccine, created to protect against Covid-19 virus, which includes 30, 000 participants the United States clinical research sites, who do not have Covid-19.
Rajesh Bhushan, Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said that there's a growing consensus that frontline workers would be the first recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine, but that hasn't been finalised yet.
Oxford University recently had announced satisfactory progress with the vaccine, making it one of the leading ones among the dozens of vaccine candidates being developed around the world.
Donald Trump Jr's Twitter account temporarily suspended for 'misleading coronavirus content'
Trump Jr. can still browse the site and send direct messages, but he can no longer tweet, retweet, like, or follow new accounts . A speaker who identifies herself as a doctor claims that people do not need to wear masks to avoid coronavirus transmission.
Results from Phase 1 indicated an immune response in volunteers and was generally safe.
AstraZeneca PLC, Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. have begun late-stage testing for Covid-19 vaccines, with initial results from some of the human trials expected as soon as October.
Earlier, state news service RIA Novosti reported the vaccine may be approved August 15-16.
Two doses of a United States experimental COVID-19 vaccine induced robust immune responses and controlled SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the upper and lower airways of rhesus macaques exposed to the virus, study results published Tuesday showed.
Injections were spaced 28 days apart.
"Critics say the country's push for a vaccine comes amid political pressure from the Kremlin, which is keen to portray Russian Federation as a global scientific force", notes the report.
A study by Russian scientists has shown that water can nearly completely destroy the novel coronavirus within 72 hours.
The Russian government denied the allegations.