Moderna eyes end of November for results on COVID-19 vaccine

Moderna said trial results for its COVID-19 vaccine are possible by the end of the month after reaching the trigger point for an interim analysis. 

The company said Wednesday that enough of the participants in its study contracted the disease, and that it is preparing to submit data on the cases to an independent Data Safety Monitoring Board for analysis. 

Moderna added that the board will likely share efficacy results before the end of the month, CNN notes.

Moderna is conducting a trial with 30,000 people in which half are given the vaccine and half are given a saline placebo. Participants do not know if they were given the vaccine in the blind study. 

The company planned to conduct an interim analysis once 53 people in the trial contracted COVID-19. However, the analysis will now include “substantially more” cases due to increase over the last week. 

In an interview with the Financial Times, Anthony Fauci said he thought that positive data from Moderna’s vaccine will be announced “within a week.” 

“We were told that literally in the next few days to a week they’ll be doing the same thing of looking at the data as the Pfizer people did a week ago,” Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said.

His comments came after Pfizer announced that its vaccine was over 90 percent effective. 

Moderna and Pfizer are both creating messenger RNA-based vaccines, meaning they use genetic material to cause the body to create a protein that triggers an immune response.