The daily business briefing: January 4, 2021

U.S officials consider giving half-doses of Moderna vaccine, Bitcoin hits record high on its 12th anniversary, and more

Moderna coronavirus vaccine.
(Image credit: PAUL SANCYA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

1. U.S. considers halving Moderna vaccine doses to accelerate immunizations

Moncef Slaoui, the head of the federal COVID-19 vaccine program, said Sunday that it might be possible to cut doses of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine by half to help speed up the immunization effort. "We know that for the Moderna vaccine giving half the dose for people between the ages of 18 to 55 — two doses, half the dose, which means exactly achieving the objective of immunizing double the number of people with the doses we have — we know it induces identical immune response to the 100 microgram dose," Slaoui said. Federal officials are trying to accelerate the vaccine program after ending 2020 with far fewer doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines distributed and administered than had been projected.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.