Moderna Announces Additional Investments to Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Supply for 2022
Moderna’s investments will double the formulation fill/finish and drug substance manufacturing of its vaccine to up to three billion doses in 2022 at various manufacturing sites.
Moderna announced on April 29, 2021 that it is making new funding commitments and is increasing supply at its manufacturing facilities in order to increase the global supply of its COVID-19 vaccine to up to three billion doses in 2022.
The investments will include the doubling of formulation fill/finish and drug substance manufacturing at Rovi’s Spain-based facility, and a 50% increase of drug substance at Moderna’s facilities in the United States, Moderna said in a company press release. Lonza also announced on April 29, 2021 that it has agreed to expand its ongoing collaboration with Moderna to double drug substance manufacturing for the vaccine at Lonza’s Visp, Switzerland, site. This investment will include the addition of new manufacturing lines expected to be operational in early 2022.
After the investments are completed, Moderna expects an increase in safety stock of raw materials and finished product used to deliver committed volumes.
“As we follow the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, we believe that there will continue to be significant need for our mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and our variant booster candidates into 2022 and 2023. We are hearing from governments that there is no technology that provides the high efficacy of mRNA [messenger RNA] vaccines and the speed necessary to adapt to variants, while allowing reliable scalability of manufacturing. Today we have announced that our investments in Europe, including Spain, France, and Belgium, Switzerland, and the US will allow us to deliver up to three billion doses in 2022, depending on the mix of product between primary series of vaccination and variant boosters,” said Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, in the press release. “We thank our manufacturing partners for their work and their commitment. Together with our partners, Moderna is committed to continuously developing best-in-class variant boosters so we can end this pandemic as fast as possible.”
