Moderna vaccine in Serbia in October: Does it protect against Delta strain and how effective is it?

Photo: Tanjug/AP

Vaccination against Covid-19 in Serbia officially began on December 24, 2020, and Serbian citizens have since had the opportunity to choose one of the five vaccines on offer.

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These are the US-German Pfizer/Biontech, the Russian Sputnik, the Chinese Sinopharm, the British Oxford AstraZeneca and the US Moderna.

According to announcements from March, the Moderna vaccine will arrive in Serbia in the last quarter of this year, which was confirmed today by President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic.

"We will soon have the fifth vaccine, we got Moderna too and it will arrive in October. We will soon come out with the first series of the vaccine - the component 1 produced in our country," he said.

What is the Moderna vaccine technology

Moderna, like Pfizer, is an RNA vaccine, which works by inserting the genetic code of the virus into the body when it begins to produce a part of coronavirus to which the body begins to develop a defense system.

Vaccines based on this technology are relatively new, and their development began in 2005. Moderna started making its vaccine against Covid-19 as soon as Chinese scientists published the RNA sequence of the new coronavirus in January 2020.

How efficient is it?

According to data, which is the result of clinical trials, the efficacy of Moderna in the prevention from Covid-19 of people who received both doses is 94.1 percent.

According to a study by the US Center for Disease Prevention and Control, a single dose of Moderna vaccine is 80 percent effective in preventing coronavirus infection. The percentages rose to 90, two weeks after the second dose, showed a study that included vaccinated health workers.

Does it protect against the Delta strain?

In early July, the company Moderna published a new study which shows that their vaccine also provides protection against the Delta strain of the virus, which is currently in focus.

"As we fight to defeat the epidemic, it is important to keep up with the virus. We continue to study new strains, collect and publish data as soon as it becomes available. The latest data is encouraging and shows that the Moderna vaccine should also protect against newly detected strains."

(Telegraf.rs)