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NEW YORK (REUTERS) – The U.S. government is considering giving some people half the dose of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine to speed up vaccinations, a federal official said Sunday (Jan. 3).
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed, the federal vaccine program, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that officials were in talks with Moderna and the Food and Drug Administration about the idea. Moderna’s vaccine requires two injections.
“We know that for the Moderna vaccine, giving half the dose to people between 18 and 55 years old, two doses, half the dose, which means exactly achieving the goal of immunizing twice as many people with the doses we have, “Dr. Slaoui said.
“We know that it induces an identical immune response” at the full dose, he added.
Moderna and the FDA could not immediately be reached for comment.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they had administered 4,225,756 first doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and distributed 13,071,925 doses.
The United States also approved a Pfizer vaccine, which like Moderna’s requires two injections. Vaccines have not reached initial targets, as officials expected to have 20 million people vaccinated by the end of 2020.
Dr. Slaoui said he was optimistic that vaccines would continue to accelerate.
He rejected the suggestion that officials should prioritize giving a single injection to more people, rather than withholding doses for the second injection, saying that cutting Modern vaccine doses in half was “a more responsible approach than it would be based on facts and data. “
Dr. Slaoui said it probably won’t be known until late spring if vaccinated people can still transmit the disease to others.
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