Moderna: Coronavirus vaccine nearly 95% effective in early look

Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine was nearly 95% effective and thwarted severe disease in an interim analysis, the company said Monday, putting a second drugmaker on track to request emergency approval before the end of the year.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company said it counted 95 cases within its trial of 30,000 participants. Only five of them were in the vaccine arm of the trial, versus 90 in the placebo group.

It also looked at 11 severe cases of COVID-19 and found that all of those participants received the dummy shots, not the vaccine — a finding deemed “absolutely critical” by government scientist Anthony Fauci.

“The results of this trial are truly striking,” said Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which collaborated with Moderna.

The news comes one week after Pfizer said its coronavirus vaccine was over 90% effective in a preliminary analysis. Both companies are using a pioneering messenger-RNA platform for their vaccines.

“All the boxes have now been checked,” Dr. Fauci said. “The platform clearly works. It works here with Moderna, it worked with Pfizer.”

While more analysis is needed, the early results stunned experts who had lower expectations for efficacy.

Moderna said a parallel study found its vaccine remains stable if stored at minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit for up to six months. Under normal refrigeration temperatures of 36-46 degrees, it can last for up to 30 days.