Moderna Strives to Produce 1 Billion Vaccine Doses

Moderna, Inc. published a supply update for the experimental Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, stating the company is increasing its base-case global production estimate from 500 to 600 million vaccine doses for 2021. 

Furthermore, Moderna’s press statement added, ‘it is continuing to invest and add staff to build up to potentially 1 billion vaccine doses for 2021.’

The Company said it expects about 100 million doses to be available in the USA by the end of the first quarter of 2021, with 200 million doses total available by the end of the second quarter.

The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine (mRNA-1273) vaccine received Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. FDA on December 18, 2020, and Moderna began supplying to the government shortly thereafter. 

Moderna reported that approximately 18 million doses had been supplied to the U.S. Government to date. 

Additional vaccine doses have also been provided to the Canadian government following Health Canada's Interim Order’s authorization on December 23, 2020. The Canadian Government has agreed to purchase 40 million doses.

Moderna has submitted the final Conditional Marketing Authorization Application following rolling submissions with the European Medicines Agency and several other regulatory agencies worldwide.

“Our effectiveness in providing early supply to the U.S. and Canadian governments and our ability to increase baseline production estimates for 2021 are both signals that our scale-up of mRNA vaccine production is a success,” stated Juan Andres, Chief Technical Operations and Quality Officer at Massachusetts based Moderna. 

“I want to thank the many private and government collaborators, contractors, and the hundreds of Moderna staff who have been working thoughtfully and tirelessly to accomplish this.”

Previously, Moderna announced a partnership with Lonza Ltd. for vaccine production inside and outside the United States. SACatalent Inc. in the U.S. provides Fill-finish services, and by ROVI and Recipharm outside the USA.

The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine is an mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 encoding for a prefusion stabilized form of the Spike (S) protein co-developed by Moderna and investigators from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Vaccine Research Center. The first clinical batch funded by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations was completed on February 7, 2020.

Francis Collins, M.D., director of the National Institutes of Health, recently shared with WebMD his biggest lesson learned during the vaccine development project: “It had taught us that we could bring scientists together from all sectors in new and creative collaborative arrangements and get things done a lot faster than people might have thought possible before this came about."

PrecisionVaccinations publishes research-based news.