Moderna Covid vaccine approved for use in UK



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CSL staff are working in the lab on November 8, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia, where they will begin manufacturing the AstraZeneca-Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine.

Darrian Traynor | Getty Images

LONDON – Britain’s medicines regulator on Friday approved Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine for emergency use in the country.

This is the third vaccine authorized in Britain, following previous vaccine approvals from Pfizer and BioNTech, the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.

In a statement, the country’s health ministry said the Moderna vaccine meets “strict standards for safety, efficacy and quality” from the Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency.

He added that the UK had ordered an additional 10 million doses of the vaccine, bringing its total to 17 million. They should be available from the spring.

The MHRA cleared the Moderna vaccine after months of rigorous clinical trials involving tens of thousands of people, the statement said. He added that it was 94% effective in preventing Covid, including in the elderly.

“This is another great news and another weapon in our arsenal to tame this terrible disease,” Health and Social Affairs Secretary Matt Hancock said in a statement.

The UK has already vaccinated around 1.5 million people and Hancock said Friday’s approval would allow the country to further speed up its vaccination schedule.

Britain has reported nearly 2.9 million confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 78,600 related deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The country is currently grappling with a new strain of the virus that is more transmissible and on Thursday it reported its second number of daily deaths from Covid at 1,162.

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