Moderna has received U.S. regulatory approval for its next generation COVID-19 vaccine, mNexspike. This is a huge leap toward creating next-generation coronavirus vaccines. Late Friday, regulators authorized the use of a new COVID-19 vaccine. This provides people, and particularly people at highest risk for severe disease, with an additional way to help protect themselves.
Moderna’s CEO, Stephane Bancel, emphasized the importance of this new vaccine, stating that it “adds an important new tool to help protect people at high risk of severe disease from COVID-19.” This latest statement underscores the company’s dedication to advancing public health by making innovative options for vaccines available to more people.
The mNexspike vaccine is designed to be administered at a quarter of the dose. It uses just one-fifth of the dose employed in Moderna’s existing vaccine, Spikevax. Their formulation was further fine-tuned to better focus the immune response while still enabling this lower dose. There are important limitations surrounding the use of the new vaccine. This is indicative of the uniquely entrenched vaccine skepticism among some public health officials in the current administration.
Though mNexspike presents an exciting new way to get vaccinated, it should not be seen as a replacement for the current Spikevax vaccine. Instead, this fall, Moderna is going to offer both of those options to the public. The Trump administration made a controversial decision a few months ago when it canceled funding for Moderna’s research on vaccines for emerging pandemic flu viruses. This move happened just days before the approval of mNexspike.
mNexspike is an important element of our strategy to revive COVID-19 vaccination. Instead, we’re dealing with the perennial problem of vaccination hesitancy. The U.S. has mobilized to administer COVID-19 vaccines at different scales over time. Yet, mNexspike’s limitations underscore a lack of trust surrounding vaccine safety and efficacy that continues to plague local officials, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
