The FDA on Monday gave full approval to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine for those 18 and older.
It's been on the market under an Emergency Use Authorization and has been used for more than two-hundred million vaccinations. The Pfizer vaccine received full approval in August.
Moderna will market the vaccine as Spikevax. University at Buffalo Jacobs Medical School Infectious Disease specialist Dr. Timothy Murphy said this will take away the claim of vaccine opponents who argue they won't take an experimental vaccine.
"I've heard a lot of people say that and that's misinformation," he said. "I think we have a public health crisis right now, of misinformation, and I do think also that if people, even people who have made the decision not to get the vaccine, based on that kind of information, if they had accurate information, they would make a different decision."
Murphy said the public supports the vaccine.
"I live in the clinical research world and the translational research world, where we spend a lot of time trying to convince people to participate in clinical trials and what has happened for many, many people in COVID and during the pandemic is they really want to be part of the new treatments," Murphy said.
A SUNY distinguished professor and director of the Jacobs Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Murphy said medicine has done amazing work on COVID, a disease that wasn't on public notice much more than two years ago and now has a test to look for it, vaccinations and more and more drugs to treat someone ill with the virus without going into the hospital.
"We have all of this real world evidence that the vaccine is safe and effective. The vaccine is highly effective at preventing severe disease," he said. "That means preventing hospitalizations and preventing deaths. This vaccine has saved lives and has the potential to save many more lives."
