We just received more good news regarding a potential coronavirus vaccine.
The Moderna vaccine is 94.5% affective against the coronavirus according to early research data that was released by the company today.
The high success rate has a lot of experts feeling very optimistic about the vaccine.
“These are obviously very exciting results,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“It’s just as good as it gets — 94.5% is truly outstanding.”
The results came from the Data Safety and Monitoring Board, which is an independent panel analyzing Moderna’s clinical trial data.
Members of Moderna were thrilled to hear the results.
“It was one of the greatest moments in my life and my career. It is absolutely amazing to be able to develop this vaccine and see the ability to prevent symptomatic disease with such high efficacy,” said Dr. Tal Zacks, Moderna’s chief medical officer.
It’s expected that vaccinations could begin to be administered in the second half of next month and that they will begin with high-risk groups.
Closer to the spring, the vaccines will be available to the rest of the population.
The actual participant results were pretty interesting.
15,000 study participants were given a placebo and over the course of several months, 90 of them develop the coronavirus. Of those 90, 11 developed severe forms of the disease.
Out of the 15,000 participants who were given the vaccine, only five of them developed coronavirus and none of them became seriously ill.
So it seems that even when you contract the virus after getting vaccinated, your odds of getting seriously ill decrease (probably pretty dramatically).
It was also reported that the vaccine did not have any serious side effects.
The only side effects that were reported were mild symptoms such as body aches and headaches but those were only a small percentage of the participants.
At a time when we are likely looking at more lockdowns coming our way in the next couple of weeks, this news is very up-lifting.
It suggests that in a matter of only another month or two, members of the public will begin getting vaccinated and we will start to be on the path back to normalcy.
If everything goes according to plan, next summer could be the time everybody has been waiting for where group gatherings no longer pose a serious risk and large stadium venues can open back up.
We just need to get through the middle of winter and we should be off to the races!
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Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.