Moderna to supply up to 500 million COVID-19 vaccines to COVAX
pharmafile | May 4, 2021 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Sales and Marketing | COVAX, COVID-19, Moderna, Vaccine, WHO
Moderna have announced a supply agreement with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for up to 500 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccine, including an initial 34 million doses to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Through this agreement, on behalf of the COVAX Facility, Gavi also retains the option to procure 466 million additional doses in 2022.
COVAX is a global initiative co-led by Gavi, alongside the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the World Health Organization (WHO). It aims to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries, regardless of income levels.
Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna said: “I am grateful to our Gavi and COVAX partners for their tireless work and to the entire Moderna team for their collaboration to reach this agreement. This is an important milestone as we work to ensure that people around the world have access to our COVID-19 vaccine.
“We recognise that many countries have limited resources to access COVID-19 vaccines. We support COVAX’s mission to ensure broad, affordable and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and we remain committed to doing everything that we can to ending this ongoing pandemic with our mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.”
On April 30, the WHO issued an Emergency Use listing (EUL) for Moderna’s vaccine, a process that assesses novel health products during public health emergencies with the goal of making medicines, vaccines and/or diagnostics available to address the emergency.
Moderna’s jab is an mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 encoding for a prefusion stabilised form of the Spike protein and was found to be 94.1% effective in preventing severe COVID-19 in clinical trials.
Noubar Afeyan, Co-Founder and Chairman of Moderna and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, said: “We must find ways to help world-changing breakthroughs – especially in the form of life-saving medicines like mRNA – reach the entire world.
“I am delighted that the Moderna team has been able to bring this agreement with COVAX to completion, and with it the opportunity to bring up to half a billion doses of our vaccine to populations in 92 of the lowest income countries in the world.
“Having experienced the impact such agreements can have on reaching global development goals, I could not be more excited.”
Kat Jenkins
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