NEW YORK —  According to published reports, the U.S. could authorize emergency use of Moderna’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine in December with FDA approval. The company’s CEO Stéphane Bancel said if the company gets positive interim results in November from a large clinical trial.

Bancel’s comments suggest Moderna’s timetable isn’t that far off from Pfizer’s, which said last week it expects to seek U.S. authorization of emergency use of its vaccine by late November.

Pfizer, which is working with Germany’s BioNTech has already manufactured “several hundred thousand doses” at its plant in Puurs, Belgium, according to the Daily Mail. The pharma giant hopes to make 100M doses available this year, a figure that will be dwarfed by the 1.3B the company aims to manufacture in 2021.

Moderna said it is also prepared to ramp up production. In August, it signed a $1.5B contract with the U.S. to supply 100M doses, with an option of additional supply.