Table 1.

A brief description of the two messenger ribonucleic acid vaccines in current use, both eliciting similar humoral and cellular immune responses

	BNT162b2	mRNA-1273
General name	Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine	Moderna vaccine
FDA approval	December 11, 2020	December 18, 2020
Dosage	2 shots of 30 µg each, 21 days apart; given intramuscularly in deltoid muscle	2 shots of 50 µg each, 28 days apart; given intramuscularly in deltoid muscle
Age group	16 years and above	18 years and above
Effectiveness in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection (%)	95	94.5
Cost	$19.8	$32-37

SARS-CoV-2 – Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; FDA – Food and drug administration; mRNA – Messenger ribonucleic acid