On January 31, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine for those 18 and older. Moderna is the second COVID-19 Vaccine to be fully approved, after Pfizer on August 23, 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The approval of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine during this specific time is likely associated with a recent outbreak of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Omicron is highly infectious, even for those vaccinated and even boosted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moderna reached this approval by proving its \u201crigorous standards of safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality.\u201d<\/a> This aforementioned effectiveness refers to its over 90% effectiveness<\/a> for preventing symptomatic COVID-19, as determined by early randomized trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine will now be marketed as SpikeVax, though it has the same makeup as the emergency use-authorized Moderna COVID-19 vaccine of the past year. Because of these circumstances, SpikeVax can be used interchangeably with the EUA Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The vaccine is available through a two-dose primary series for those 18 and older, and a third-dose primary series for those 18 and older who have been deemed to be immunocompromised, as well as a booster dose for those 18 and older at least five months after completing the primary series of the Moderna vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Moderna vaccine is also authorized to serve as a \u201cmix-and-match\u201d single booster dose for those 18 and older who had received the primary series of a different vaccine. For example, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and Johnson & Johnson vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n