Moderna's COVID Vaccine Gets WHO Approval for Emergency Use

GENEVA -- The World Health Organization on Friday said it had listed the anti-COVID-19 Moderna vaccine for emergency use.

The listing procedure helps countries unable to assess a vaccine's effectiveness themselves have access as quickly as possible and allow the Covax vaccine sharing scheme and other partners to distribute it to poorer countries.

The U.S. vaccine is the fifth jab to earn WHO's emergency listing.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization for the Moderna vaccine last Dec. 18 and a marketing authorisation valid throughout the European Union was granted by the European Medicines Agency last Jan. 6.

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WHO said in a statement that its Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) had found the Moderna vaccine to have an efficacy of 94.1%

The other vaccines listed for emergency use by WHO are Pfizer BioNTech; AstraZeneca; Serum Institute of India; and Janssen.

Moderna on Thursday said it expected to produce up to three billion doses of its vaccine in 2022 through new funding commitments to boost supply at manufacturing sites in Europe and the US.