UK government in talks with US biotech firm Moderna on access to COVID-19 vaccine

The US biotech firm announced earlier in the day, that its mRNA-based candidate vaccine against COVID-19 has proven to be 94.5 percent effective in phase three clinical trials and had been "generally well tolerated" by participants, although side effects such as fatigue, myalgia, and headaches were reported in a minority of cases.

"The news from Moderna appears to be good and represents another significant step towards finding an effective COVID19 vaccine. As part of the ongoing work of the Vaccines Taskforce, the government is in advanced discussions with Moderna to ensure UK access to their vaccine as part of the wider UK portfolio," the UK government said in a statement.

The UK government, which has already secured access to 350 million vaccines doses through agreements with six separate vaccine developers, said that Moderna is currently scaling up their European supply chain, so the doses would become available in spring 2021 in the UK at the earliest.

Among the doses already secured by the UK are 40 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, whose developers claimed is 90 percent effective in preventing the coronavirus, and another 30 million doses of the Janssen vaccine, which began its phase three clinical trials across the UK on Monday.