CBC News – Moderna is developing a three-in-one vaccine against COVID-19, flu and RSV.
The vaccine manufacturer is actively promoting the shot and hoping for regulatory approval in the next year.
But without solid safety and efficacy data from clinical trials, it may never come to fruition.
Moderna is actively promoting a combined COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccine, something that aims to target three of the most serious respiratory illnesses circulating each year in a single shot.
But while a safe and effective vaccine would be welcome as Canada faces a surge in pediatric RSV cases, stubbornly high COVID hospitalizations and deaths and steeply rising flu cases, the pharmaceutical company hasn’t released data to support the vaccine’s safety or efficacy.
“I think we need to be really cautious. We have no data on safety, no data on effectiveness or efficacy or age groups.”
Moderna president Stephen Hoge told CBC News he hoped the three-in-one vaccine would be submitted to Health Canada for regulatory approval within a year.
“We really do think that the triple combo — the flu, plus COVID, plus RSV — is really going to be the ideal shot for us to get every year,” he said in an interview this week.
“And honestly it just takes one shot to try and prevent all of that, and so we’ll try and add as much bang for the buck into that shot as we can and hopefully help protect people through winter seasons in the years to come.”
‘More questions than answers’
But without solid data from clinical trials this combined vaccine may never come to fruition.
“There’s still more questions than answers, obviously, with releases like this that come from companies without accompanying data,” said Matthew Miller, a vaccine researcher and associate professor of infectious diseases and immunology at McMaster University.
“I think we need to be really cautious. We have no data on safety, no data on effectiveness or efficacy or age groups. How would you handle updating various components of that vaccine? Lots and lots of questions.” …
