NDTV:[3] US biotech firm Moderna on Monday announced its experimental vaccine against Covid-19 was 94.5 percent effective, marking a second major breakthrough in the vaccine hunt.
[4] Moderna released early results from a clinical trial with more than 30,000 participants, after US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech last week said their vaccine was 90 percent effective.
[5] The head of the World Health Organization said Monday that a vaccine would not by itself stop the coronavirus pandemic.
[6] The pandemic is raging months after it broke out, with infections soaring past 54 million and claiming more than 1.3 million lives.
[7] “A vaccine will complement the other tools we have, not replace them,” director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “A vaccine on its own will not end the pandemic.”It is easier for coronavirus to spread indoors than outdoors as people stay inside their homes during winter which is a perfect set-up for the contagion, according to Dr Vivek Murthy, the top Indian-American advisor to President-elect Joe Biden on COVID-19.Britain expects to start rolling out the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine just before Christmas if it is declared safe and effective, health minister Matt Hancock said on Monday.
“We’re working very closely with the company,” he told BBC TV. “We’ll be ready to roll it out as soon as it comes, we’ll be ready from the first of December…, but more likely is that we may be able to start rolling it out before Christmas.”