Monday on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel gave an update on the coronavirus vaccine after requesting an emergency authorization of the product.
According to Bancel, once the vaccine, which has a 94.1% efficacy, according to Bancel, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it could be approved.
“We are very excited about, as you said, the confirmation from the first analysis that we shared two weeks ago, that the vaccine is working really well, very high efficacy,” he said. “And what got me even most excited and pleased yesterday when I learned about the data is the severe cases. There were 30 severe cases in the study. All 30 were on placebo. There were zero cases of people who got our vaccine. And if you think about the impact of severe cases driving hospitalization, driving people in ICU and death — that is a game-changer, I believe. So, very excited.”
“So today, indeed, we’re going to be filing to the FDA for emergency use authorization,” Bancel continued. “It’s the first time in the company history that we file for commercial approval of a product. As you said, the FDA has indicated to us that likely the advisory committee, the VRBPAC meeting should happen on December 17, and hopefully, everything goes well in the next couple of weeks, you could expect between, I would say, a day to two to three days after the VRBPAC meeting potential approval — meaning, we able to ship the product, Operation Warp Speed led by [Gustave Perna] has been working on a daily basis very closely with us, and our goal is to start vaccinating Americans within 24 hours after the FDA gives an approval.”
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