The agency said on Friday, the World Health Organization has listed Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, the fifth to be given the status meant to facilitate countries’ own approval of shots.
“The objective is to make medicines, vaccines and diagnostics available as rapidly as possible to address the emergency,” the WHO said in a statement.
Mariangela Simao, WHO Assistant Director-General, said on Friday it was important to have more vaccines available because of supply problems for other shots, including from India, the main source of vaccines for the global COVAX vaccine sharing programme. India has reduced exports because of a crisis of infections.
Moderna stated this week an increase plan for its production network to increase its capacity to up to 3 billion doses in 2022.
The WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) already in January had recommended Moderna’s vaccine for all age groups 18 and above.
The first vaccines to get a WHO emergency use listing in the final hours of 2020 were Pfizer and its German partner BionTech’s shot, also an mRNA vaccine-like Moderna’s.
After that, the WHO has added vaccines from Astrazeneca-SK Bio, Serum Institute of India and Johnson & Johnson vaccines to the list.
The Geneva-based health organization is still considering Covid-19 vaccines from Sinopharm and Sinovac following an extended review, with decisions due by the end of next week.
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