hello and welcome to bbc world news the
first two
vaccines against the novel coronavirus
could be administered to americans
before christmas
that's according to the u.s health
secretary alex azar
it comes as moderna has filed for both
u.s and eu regulator
regulatory approval of its coronavirus
vaccine so that it can be recommended
for widespread use
regulators will look at trial data for
the
mrna vaccine and decide if it is safe
and effective enough for emergency use
authorization clinical studies suggest
the jab is more than 94
effective at protecting people from
becoming ill with covert 19
pfizer whose vaccine works in a similar
way has already filed for approval from
the u.s food and drug
administration well let's go straight to
the bbc's online health reporter
michelle roberts michelle good to see
you so this is another bit of good news
about the vaccine
it is so we're hearing about these
various vaccines that are getting edging
closer to this
end goal of actually becoming available
to more people so at the moment they're
still just in trials
this modern one we've got latest data
from those trials from 30 000 people
and it appears to be very effective 94
those trials also included elderly
people the the types of people that you
really need to think about protecting
um so this seems to be good news but
obviously now regulators need to look at
that data
and check that they're happy that it's
safe and effective enough to to give it
the go ahead
uh alex azaz talked about rolling it out
in the united states by
uh christmas or or you know before
christmas
there is a big question about
distribution and transportation because
there are so many countries in the world
with
huge amounts of vulnerable people that
need to get access to these kinds of
vaccines
i mean certainly the world health
organization is concerned that
possibly richer nations will be at the
front of the queue leaving developing
world and poorer nations to play catch
up with this
a lot of the stocks that are available
at the moment have been bought up
by the us the uk um various european
countries
but some are committed to a kovacs this
group this global group to get vaccines
out to the developing world
so that should hopefully help obviously
developing
actual physical stocks of the vaccine
takes time
there are lots of doses that are ready
to go
in the glass vials at the moment but
production will need to ramp up to get
to the billions that we need for the
world
indeed very much so and and i suppose
there is also this
thing around complacency where people
think ah every week we're hearing that
more companies are coming up with these
vaccines
it's important not to to relax too much
at the moment obviously we've had
thanksgiving
we've got christmas coming up where
people might be socializing more mixing
more
the virus hasn't gone away and we don't
have these vaccines to actually
give to the masses yet so the message
really from the health experts is
just hold your horses be careful keep
doing all the social distancing
but hopefully soon we will have lots of
stock to start giving to people
it's quite extraordinary michelle when
you think about this because actually
the pace in which these companies are
going and scientists are going to
develop these vaccines when when
actually some of these things can take
decades i mean it's breakneck speed
we've never seen anything
like this before and the technologies
that they're using is really exciting as
well
so the moderna and pfizer jabs use mrna
it's a brand new
type of technology and if that does work
it would mean that you could look at
using the same type of technology for
other diseases that we've not been able
to crack in the past
so it is a very exciting time very much
so michelle thanks so much for bringing
us up to speed