An advisory committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday voted in favor of authorizing Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use.
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It is the second COVID-19 vaccine in the country, following the approval of a vaccine developed by the U.S. drugmaker Pfizer in partnership with German company BioNTech.
The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee of the FDA voted 20-0 with one abstention to support the agency issuing emergency use authorization to the vaccine mRNA-1273.
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn is expected to authorize the vaccine soon after, with delivery to begin nationwide next Monday.
The FDA authorized Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use last Friday. The country started its COVID-19 vaccine rollout nationwide on Monday.
The massive vaccine rollout came as the country's COVID-19 death toll surpassed 300,000, and single-day new cases, deaths as well as hospitalizations continued to set new records.
On Friday, Mike Ryan, the director of Health Emergencies of the World Health Organization (WHO), warned that there could be up to half a year more of a pandemic with high numbers of infections and deaths.
"The vaccine is cause for hope and we should celebrate it, but the next three or six months are going to be tough," he said, explaining that there is not yet a sufficient number of vaccines to generate high levels of population immunity.