Mod­er­na hits pri­ma­ry end­point in Covid vax tri­al for youngest kids, but ef­fi­ca­cy tops out at un­der 45%

Mod­er­na on Wednes­day said it’s head­ed to the FDA for an emer­gency au­tho­riza­tion for its vac­cine in the youngest group of chil­dren (un­der 6) with in­ter­im re­sults from a late-stage tri­al show­ing that 2 dos­es of­fered a strong an­ti­body re­sponse and a fa­vor­able safe­ty pro­file.

But the place­bo-con­trolled tri­al of 6,900 healthy chil­dren al­so re­vealed that vac­cine ef­fi­ca­cy against in­fec­tion didn’t quite match the ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly high bar set by the com­pa­ny’s ear­li­er late-stage tri­als for adults, where 90+% ef­fi­ca­cy was ob­served. Much of that drop-off like­ly has to do with the emer­gence of Omi­cron, Mod­er­na said, while not­ing that the ef­fi­ca­cy was still sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

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