The US Food and Drug Administration's advisory panel, comprising external experts, has given an emergency use approval to Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, making it the second drug after Pfizer to receive such an authorisation in less than a week.
FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), made up of independent scientific and public health experts, at its meeting on Thursday voted 20-0 with one abstention to recommend Emergency Use Authorization for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine mRNA-1273.
The FDA on Friday allowed the emergency use of the country's first COVID-19 vaccine developed by American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech to combat the disease that has killed over 310,000 people in the country.