Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Director-General Eric Domingo said Wednesday the Philippines has granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.
According to Domingo, FDA took reviewed documents in connection with Moderna’s EUA application for around nine days.
The vaccine could be given to persons aged 18 and above.
In March, Moderna Inc and the Philippine government have agreed to purchase 13 million doses of the company’s vaccine scheduled to be delivered to the country by mid-year.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Red Cross will have upcoming Moderna coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines in June or July, according to its chairman Sen. Richard Gordon.
According to Gordon, there is a fee and they also need to donate another vaccine to be given to those who cannot afford it.
The two doses of the Moderna vaccine are estimated at P4,000. This means that one has to pay P8,000 to get it.
For those interested in making a reservation, please email chairman@redcross.com or call 1158.
FDA grants EUA to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine
According to Gordon, they have already prepared what to do when they have their own vaccination.
In November 2020, Moderna announced its vaccine was 94.5% effective in a preliminary analysis of a large late-stage clinical trial.
Noubar Afeyan, Moderna co-founder and chairman, discusses the company’s new data, distribution, plan for emergency use authorization, and its advantage over a vaccine by Pfizer Inc. in an interview with Bloomberg.
“In a trial of 30,000 subjects, where we already received some 95 cases of infections. In those, 90 of them were in the population that did not receive the vaccine, and only five were the only infections that did. That is where the 94.5 percent protection comes from,” said Afeyan.
He added that if that scale translates to millions of people, their vaccine would save lives and prevent severe respiratory disease cases.
Afeyan said around 10 to 20 million doses would be distributed through the supply chain before the end of 2020 and around 50 million doses by the first quarter of 2021.
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