Why Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine results represent more good news for Canada

A second company touting the results of its potential COVID-19 vaccine Monday represents particularly good news for Canada.

Citing early results, Massachusetts-based Moderna said its vaccine candidate could be as much as 94.5 per cent effective. The announcement follows results reported by that hinted at as much as 90 per cent immunity for that company’s vaccine candidate.

Canada already has a contract in place for 56 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and 20 million doses of Pfizer’s candidate, should they complete testing and receive Health Canada approval.

The new Moderna results are an early look at the final stage of human testing, but the trial isn’t done yet, so things could change. While results have been examined by an independent data safety monitoring board, they have yet to be published or peer reviewed.

At this point, the company says its results show no major safety concerns. Some volunteers reported mild or moderate symptoms, such as fatigue or headache.

“This is a pivotal moment in the development of our COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Since early January, we have chased this virus with the intent to protect as many people around the world as possible,” Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna, said in a statement.

Both Pfizer and Moderna are using a new technology that relies on mRNA to make their vaccines. Their doses include a tiny recipe for spike protein DNA, and, in theory, will prompt the recipient’s immune system to fight off future coronavirus infections. Because of the similarity in approaches, many experts were anticipating the two vaccines would see similar efficacy rates.

While RNA is a technology that has been considered promising for awhile, it has had one major drawback: the fact that doses have had to be stored at a temperature as cold as -80 C, which means an eventual distributor would need access to refrigerators and trucks .

But Moderna said Monday that its candidate remains stable at 2 to 8 C, which is about the same as a normal refrigerator, for 30 days.

“We believe that our investments in mRNA delivery technology and manufacturing process development will allow us to store and ship our COVID-19 vaccine candidate at temperatures commonly found in readily available pharmaceutical freezers and refrigerators,” chief technical operations and quality officer Juan Andres said in a release.

Pfizer’s and Moderna’s are two of the seven candidate vaccines for which the federal government has locked down advance purchase agreements. Most of the candidates are being developed by companies in the U.S. and Europe, but one Canadian company, , is expanding its trials on Canadian volunteers this week.

Canada’s vaccine-procurement strategy can be best described as putting . If all seven candidates were to be approved, Canada would be entitled to a minimum of 358 million doses of vaccine.

Most of the vaccine candidates will require two doses per person, but that is still almost enough to vaccinate everyone in the country five times.

That said, getting a working vaccine is only the first step. Once a vaccine has its final testing results, Health Canada must decide whether to approve it.

Then, millions of doses have to be manufactured — a process that is already scaling up — and the government will have to figure out how to distribute it across the country. The federal government is currently trying to find a to take on that task. Actual vaccination programs will be run by the provinces and territories.

After Pfizer announced promising results last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he expects the first vaccine doses to land as early as the beginning of next year.

Correction — Nov. 16, 2020 — This article has been updated to reflect new statements from Moderna on the storage requirements of its vaccine. As well, Canada would be entitled to a minimum of 358 million doses, not 358 doses, of vaccine if all seven vaccine candidates were to be approved.