Moderna Inc, which has reported its Covid-19 vaccine is 94 per cent effective, on Monday announced it is filing with US and European regulators for emergency use authorisation.
After a week of Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech filed for approval, Moderna follows it and has asked the US and European regulators for approval.
Moderna expects to have nearly 20 million doses of its mRNA-1273 vaccine available in the United States by the end of 2020, while it anticipates manufacturing 500 million to 1 billion doses globally in 2021.
Moderna created its shots in collaboration with the U.S. National Institutes of Health and got a final batch of results over the weekend which show the vaccine is more than 94% effective.
With more than 30,000 participants, Moderna's efficacy results are based on 196 Covid-19 cases in its huge U.S. study. Of the 196 cases, 185 were in participants who received the dummy shot and 11 who got the vaccine.
Severe illness and one death were reported in participants who got the dummy shot.
Pfizer and Moderna BioNTech will present its data results to the US Food and Drug Administration on December 10, followed by Moderna on December 17.
Moderna has a two-shot vaccines system.
The US government's vaccine management chief has said all systems are ready to deliver the vaccines to priority groups within 24 to 48 hours of FDA approval.