WHO authorizes Moderna coronavirus vaccine for emergency use

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday listed the Moderna coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, adding another shot to its arsenal in the fight against the coronavirus. 

The shot from Moderna, which is estimated to have an efficacy rate of 94.1 percent, joins shots from Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-SK Bio, Serum Institute of India and Janssen on WHO’s list of emergency use vaccines.

The addition of Moderna’s shot to the WHO’s emergency use listing is a prerequisite for it to be a part of COVAX, the program to disseminate shots to low-income countries. It also allows countries to expedite their own regulatory approval to import and administer the COVID-19 vaccine. 

The U.S. granted emergency use authorization to the Moderna shot in December, with the European Union following shortly after in January.

The authorization comes as the world works to ramp up its coronavirus vaccinations to significantly curb the pandemic over a year after it broke out in Wuhan, China.