...meaning that, with the Pfizer vaccine, the U.S. should have enough vaccine to innoculate 100 million people by the end of March 2021.
ADDENDUM: Some more details on the Moderna vaccine:
Moderna previously disclosed clinical trial data showing that 185 cases of Covid-19 occurred in those who received a placebo injection, which was given to half the volunteers in its 30,000-person study. Just 11 cases occurred in those volunteers who received the vaccine.
There were 30 cases of severe Covid-19 in the placebo group of the study, with none in the vaccine group. One volunteer in the placebo group died of Covid-19, compared to none in the vaccine group....
One difference: Moderna’s vaccine tended to cause more vaccine reactions in clinical trials, such as fevers, aches, and chills, than the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
Severe reactions — which would lead patients to be briefly impaired, but not hospitalized, appear more common with the Moderna vaccine than with the Pfizer/BioNTech one, although comparisons from different trials can be misleading. In the Moderna study, 15.8% of patients had a severe, or grade 3, reaction. Rates of fever and severe fever were similar between studies. In the Moderna study, 65.3% had fatigue, 9.7% of it severe; muscle pain occurred in 58% of patients, 9% severe; joint pain 42.8%, with 5.2% severe.
In the Pfizer/BioNTech study, 59% of volunteers reported fatigue, 4.6% of them severe. Muscle pain occurred in 37.3% of those receiving the Pfizer vaccine. Joint pain occurred in 21.9% of recipients.
However, there were also different side effects between the placebo groups in the two studies. Rates of fatigue were similar, at 23%, in both placebo groups; muscle pain occurred in 12.4% of placebo patients for Moderna and 8% for Pfizer/BioNTech, and joint pain in 10.8% for Moderna and 5.2% in the Pfizer/BioNTech....
One encouraging finding with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was that it appeared possible a single dose of the vaccine was effective in preventing Covid-19. Moderna is presenting a different analysis of the same question, looking at Covid-19 tests that were administered to patients at their first and second doses of the vaccine.
At the second injection, there were 14 cases that tested positive for Covid-19 in the vaccine group, compared to 38 in the placebo group. None of these patients had symptoms. Although the numbers are small (there were more than 14,000 patients in each group) they may indicate that one dose of the vaccine is somewhat effective in preventing the disease, and that the vaccine prevents asymptomatic cases.
