GENEVA, April 30 (AFP) - The World Health Organization on Friday (Apr 30) said it had listed the Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use.

The listing procedure helps countries unable to assess a vaccine's effectiveness themselves have access as quickly as possible and allow the Covax vaccine sharing scheme and other partners to distribute it to poorer countries.

The US vaccine is the fifth jab to earn WHO's emergency listing.

The US Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorisation for the Moderna vaccine on Dec 18 last year and a marketing authorisation valid throughout the European Union was granted by the European Medicines Agency on Jan 6 this year.

WHO said in a statement that its Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) had found the Moderna vaccine to have an efficacy of 94.1 per cent.

The other vaccines listed for emergency use by WHO are Pfizer BioNTech; AstraZeneca; Serum Institute of India; and Janssen.

Moderna on Thursday said it expected to produce up to 3 billion doses of its vaccine in 2022 through new funding commitments to boost supply at manufacturing sites in Europe and the US.