Setback For Trump Ahead of US Presidential Polls: Moderna Says Its Vaccine Won’t be Ready Before Elections | Earth Indian

New Delhi: American biotech company Moderna Inc said it won’t seek an emergency authorization for its potential COVID vaccine before the US presidential polls slated to be held in November, a report by Financial Times quoted the company’s CEO as saying.

“November 25 is the time we will have enough safety data to be able to put into an EUA file that we would send to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) – assuming that the safety data is good, i.e. a vaccine is deemed to be safe,” CEO Stephane Bancel told FT.

The US is the worst COVID-hit country in the world. With all the criticism it has received in the past months for its failure to curb the virus spread, the Trump campaign is now banking on the hopes of having the injection ready before the polls to woo the voters.

Meanwhile, results from the Phase 1 trial of an investigational COVID-19 vaccine co-developed by researchers at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Moderna have shown that it is well-tolerated and generates a strong immune response in older adults.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, noted that the experimental vaccine, mRNA-1273, was well-tolerated by the older trial participants, who were over 55 years of age.

According to the researchers from NIAID, older adults are more vulnerable to complications of COVID-19, and are an important population for vaccination.

They said understanding how the vaccine affects this section of the population is a critical part of measuring its safety and efficacy.

By Shivam Urkude || Earth Indian