Moderna Covid Vaccine Trial Included Elderly, Ethnic Min., Diabetes, Heart Disease Subgroups

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‘Just beautiful’: Another COVID-19 vaccine, from newcomer Moderna, succeeds in large-scale trial.' Science Magazine, AAAS, Nov. 16, 2020. - Excerpts:

Now, there are two. Another COVID-19 vaccine using the same previously unproven technology as the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, the U.S. and German companies that reported success on 9 November, appears to work remarkably well. And this time, the maker, U.S. biotech Moderna, is releasing a bit more data to back its claim than the other two companies.

An independent board monitoring Moderna’s 30,000-person vaccine trial met on Sunday and reported to the company and U.S. government health officials that only five people in the vaccinated group developed confirmed cases of COVID-19, whereas 90 people who received placebo shots became ill with the disease.
That’s an efficacy of 94.5%, the company reported in a press release this morning. Although the clinical trial measurement may not translate into an equally high level of real-world protection, the success indicates the vaccine is likely more than effective enough to stop the pandemic if it can be widely distributed...

The Pfizer/BioNTech collaboration first gave the pandemic-fatigued world a shot of hope when it reported that its vaccine candidate, a strand of messenger RNA (mRNA) wrapped within a lipid particle, had an efficacy of greater than 90%. But its press release didn’t reveal much else, failing to note the number of COVID-19 cases in the vaccinated and placebo groups... Moderna provided those details and more about its mRNA vaccine, adding to growing optimism among public health experts that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may soon authorize these COVID-19 vaccines for widespread use.

Moderna, a company that has yet to bring a treatment or vaccine to market, offered compelling evidence that its candidate did more than just prevent symptomatic disease, the main endpoint for both trials.

The company reported that 11 people in the trial’s placebo arm developed severe cases of COVID-19, whereas no one in the vaccinated group did.

> “Preliminary analysis suggests a broadly consistent safety and efficacy profile across all evaluated subgroups,” the press release states. This means the vaccine appears to work equally well in all populations studied, including the elderly and ethnic minorities, and people with preexisting conditions such as diabetes and heart disease that make them particularly vulnerable to severe COVID-19. “Obviously, the data speak for themselves,” says Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which helped support the study.

“This is a very positive result.” He suspects that by late next month doses of one or both vaccines could start to be offered to people at highest risk from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/just-beautiful-another-covid-19-vaccine-newcomer-moderna-succeeds-large-scale-trial