Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, December six. I'm Oscar Ramiras from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America.
Speaker 1: We are on track to get the second coronavirus vaccine
Speaker 1: approved by the end of the week. On Tuesday, the
Speaker 1: FDA confirmed that Maderna's two dose vaccine is safe and effective.
Speaker 1: In the first week of its rollout, about six million
Speaker 1: doses will be shipped out. The government also bought another
Speaker 1: one million doses from Maderna for a total of two
Speaker 1: hundred million at a cost of three point two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Sarah Overmall, healthcare reporter at Politico, joins us for more
Speaker 1: good vaccine news. Thanks for joining us, Sarah, Yeah, happy
Speaker 1: to be here. It seems we're on the same track
Speaker 1: as we were last week with the Fiser vaccine. The
Speaker 1: FDA has cleared the path for the second coronavirus vaccine
Speaker 1: to be approved. This is the one from Maderna. It's
Speaker 1: very similar to the Fiser vaccine. The FDA panel will
Speaker 1: go through it, make recommendations, and hopefully over the weekend
Speaker 1: and early next week we'll already be seeing shots at
Speaker 1: Ministered of the Maderna vaccine. So Sarah tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about what the FDA panel has said about
Speaker 1: this vaccine. They basically said it's safe and effective. This
Speaker 1: is basically deja vu for last week, so the Fiser vaccine.
Speaker 1: It was authorized by FDA last week on very similar data,
Speaker 1: which is why we are pretty confident about the trajectory
Speaker 1: for this MODANA one. We expect that after expert Advisory
Speaker 1: Panel meets on Thursday, the FDA could be authorizing it
Speaker 1: as soon as Friday morning, as it did with Fiser,
Speaker 1: and then we will have a CDC panel meeting over
Speaker 1: the weekend to talk about recommendations for who this goes
Speaker 1: to first. But because they are really similar vaccines, they
Speaker 1: have a very similar technology called Messenger RNA. They also
Speaker 1: have almost identical effective dis rates, we can expect some
Speaker 1: of these same things. There are some important distinctions for
Speaker 1: the moderna want, especially with certain populations that they have
Speaker 1: different data for. For instance, it shows that it's more
Speaker 1: factive and younger people than it is in people over
Speaker 1: the age of sixty five. That could be a really
Speaker 1: important distinction. As we roll these doses out and find
Speaker 1: out that maybe the Fiser one is more ideal for
Speaker 1: nursing homes, and the Modena one might be more ideal
Speaker 1: for people who work in high exposure areas but aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily as old as somebody who's in ay, more vulnerable situations.
Speaker 1: So these are the things we're going to find out
Speaker 1: over the next few days. But you're right, we could
Speaker 1: as of next week have millions more doses to be
Speaker 1: shipping out across the country. The initial round of doses
Speaker 1: are obviously limited. How many doses are we going to
Speaker 1: be able to see go out in the first push,
Speaker 1: So they're actually will be more of the Nodanna doses
Speaker 1: out in the first push than there were of these
Speaker 1: FISER ones. Government officials have said that nearly six million
Speaker 1: will be put out into more than three thousand sites
Speaker 1: next week if we do have this authorize, which we're
Speaker 1: expected to. That's in comparison to two point nine million
Speaker 1: doses from FISER that are going out as we speak,
Speaker 1: and two point nine allion from Guisor that have been
Speaker 1: held back for a second dose. So between the two
Speaker 1: of them, each has promised twenty million doses a piece
Speaker 1: this month, which is forty millions total, but they all
Speaker 1: are two dose regiments. You can think of this as
Speaker 1: twenty million very high made people getting doses this month.
Speaker 1: There was some criticism with the government's action on the
Speaker 1: Fiser vaccine for not buying that extension or extra doses,
Speaker 1: But on this case with the Moderna vaccine, the US
Speaker 1: did exercise their right to buy a hundred million additional
Speaker 1: doses of the Maderna vaccine. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about that and then the costs associated with it, because
Speaker 1: this one is a little more closely tied to Operation
Speaker 1: Warp Speed. The government gave Maderna more money to develop
Speaker 1: this whole thing exactly, and so they had options with
Speaker 1: both of those pharmaceutical companies to buy one hundred million
Speaker 1: doses originally, but the option to buy hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: more with each of them. The Christism lately has been
Speaker 1: that they did not exercise that option when they could
Speaker 1: have with Fiser, so they had an option to buy
Speaker 1: up to five hundred million doses from them, and according
Speaker 1: to side there, they offered that to the government multiple
Speaker 1: times and the government didn't take them up on that,
Speaker 1: and so they moved on. They have signed multiple different
Speaker 1: agreements with other countries in the world. I mean, you
Speaker 1: think about the entire world wants these highly effective vaccines,
Speaker 1: so kind of to them that loss, or to shore
Speaker 1: up our supplies here in the United States. The United
Speaker 1: States announced late last week that they would buy a
Speaker 1: hundred million more of the Modanna vaccine, and that brings
Speaker 1: its total costs with Modanna to three point two billion dollars,
Speaker 1: which is eye popping. But when you think about how
Speaker 1: much this company, which has never actually mass produced a
Speaker 1: vaccine or products ever before Modanna, this is going to
Speaker 1: be their first authorized products. This is a huge undertaking.
Speaker 1: That's why there's so much money going towards this. So
Speaker 1: you can think about this as the US trying to
Speaker 1: shore up its supplies in this arena. It also has
Speaker 1: multiple other agreements out there with six manufacturers total to
Speaker 1: get if everything goes right, nine billion doses. That might
Speaker 1: seem like a lot, like way too much for the US,
Speaker 1: but we don't know how many of those are going
Speaker 1: to work. We even just learned last week that another
Speaker 1: vaccine from Snophi and Glackslow Smith Klein is going to
Speaker 1: be delayed until the end of one because they didn't
Speaker 1: get really good results. So this is why the US
Speaker 1: is betting so big. Yeah, and the MODERNA vaccine for
Speaker 1: its part, is easier to ship and store than the
Speaker 1: fiser one is, so you know, maybe this vaccine will
Speaker 1: make it into rural areas a little more easily. So
Speaker 1: there's benefits, you know, in pros and cons to each
Speaker 1: one kind of on this. So at least a good
Speaker 1: thing that they bought up a bunch of those extra orders.
Speaker 1: And the last thing I wanted to ask real quick
Speaker 1: was just about how much the moderna vaccine protects. There's
Speaker 1: been things made that it can reduce severe effects of coronavirus.
Speaker 1: They're hoping obviously that it will reduce transmission rates, but
Speaker 1: that's kind of what the focus was of their study
Speaker 1: as well, and just how effective this would be. So
Speaker 1: that was something we learned in the Food and Drug
Speaker 1: Administration's briefing documents tuesday morning, was that not only is
Speaker 1: this effective broadly, but there's a suggestion that after the
Speaker 1: first dose it might even have curbed infections. And you
Speaker 1: might think that's pretty obvious, that's what vaccine you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do, But we don't actually know yet how effective
Speaker 1: vaccines would be as preventing transmission, which is kind of
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal. We don't want people to have to
Speaker 1: get sick in the first place. This indicates that the
Speaker 1: Modanna vaccine might be able to do that. And then,
Speaker 1: like you said, with severe COVID illness, there are really
Speaker 1: promising results from Nemoderna vaccine. There were thirty severe illnesses
Speaker 1: in the PLACEBA arm and none in the vaccine arm.
Speaker 1: That's great news. So we actually have between this advisor
Speaker 1: two really promising candidates first out of the gate. We
Speaker 1: kind of couldn't expect for better, to be honest, So
Speaker 1: now it's you know, it's the challenge of getting this
Speaker 1: out to people, getting it to the people who need
Speaker 1: it most right away, and meeting the demand that we
Speaker 1: know we're going to have. And Dena's as an author
Speaker 1: in the world. Sarah Overmall, healthcare reporter at Politico, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us. Oh wait, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been
Speaker 1: reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You
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