The headline is slightly misleading if only because it's so vague, which is why this is out today:
"Moderna says it’s working on Covid booster shot for variant in South Africa, says current vaccine provides some protection"
"The company’s researchers said its current coronavirus vaccine appears to work against the two highly transmissible strains found in the U.K. and South Africa, although it looks like it may be less effective against the latter."
> Moderna is starting development on an omicron-specific vaccine
Also the Novavax producers.
RSS feeds hours ago were full of "ready in 100 days" expressions; as I am making posts-vetting checks on search engines I am seeing one «would have the shot ready for testing and manufacturing in the next few weeks» (https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/novavax-tes...).
That article seems to just assume that Moderna are acting in bad faith there, without a lot of evidence. Certainly if they wanted to be obstructive they still could be, but the article-writer doesn't prove it either way.
I'd be interested to know if that's been tested. For example, have any other companies or countries proposed making the Moderna vaccine at all? And what happened? Co-operation? Grudging support? Full-on obstruction?
The Guardian (British): "This is the case for Moderna and another Boston company, CureVac, both of which are building Covid-19 vaccines out of messenger RNA."
So now it's a Boston company? According to Wikipedia the one in Boston is just a subsidiary.
"The Moderna vaccine is also known as “mRNA-1273”, but appears to lack a brand name other than “Moderna COVID-19 vaccine” which is what it says on the product label"
> Moderna was the first vaccine to enter clinical trials back in March. Only 63 days after the genetic sequence of the virus was posted online, the company injected the first volunteer with their candidate. They were able to move so quickly because they used a gene-based technology to create their vaccine. Those types of vaccines are relatively simple to create once researchers know the viral gene they’re trying to target.
> Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine was built using the same method. The two are made from tiny pieces of mRNA, which gives the human body instructions to produce copies of the coronavirus spike protein. Then, the immune system learns to defend against that protein. Gene-based vaccines are the long-promised future of vaccine development, but they’ve never been approved for use in people by the Food and Drug Administration. The early successes of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are a promising sign for the method.
And of course, being in the middle of a pandemic 'helps', in terms of funding, clearing red tape, and also seeing results in testing (with so many people being infected, you can start to see differences between placebo and not-placebo groups much more quickly).
Okay, but you should probably be more careful how you describe the information. For instance, you could state that you want the Moderna vaccine because of what they've said about effectiveness against emerging strains.
It's likely that the antibodies produced in response to the Pfizer vaccine have similar cross reactivity as the Moderna vaccine (because they cause production of the same spike protein, which is what the immune system reacts to).
And of course, Pfizer is also studying the situation:
On November 22, the New York Times published a fascinating account of the race to produce a coronavirus vaccine. The Times report included a number of interesting facts, but one really grabbed my attention: It turns out that the Moderna vaccine, which was just shown to be 95 percent effective, was actually developed by the company in just two days in January 2020.
That’s right, they developed the vaccine in two days in January, but then needed to spend the following ten months performing tests in order to meet the FDA’s standards for vaccine safety and efficacy.
During those ten months, 1.3 million people, including a quarter million Americans, have died from the coronavirus.
"Moderna says it’s working on Covid booster shot for variant in South Africa, says current vaccine provides some protection"
"The company’s researchers said its current coronavirus vaccine appears to work against the two highly transmissible strains found in the U.K. and South Africa, although it looks like it may be less effective against the latter."
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/25/covid-vaccine-moderna-workin...
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