No Shortage Of Work For Moderna
The company has announced it is adding two new production lines at its plant near Boston to tackle production of covid booster shots. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense has ordered 200 million more of its shots, while the E.U. has ordered another 150 million.
Fox Business:
Moderna Wins $3.3B Defense Department Contract For Additional COVID-19 Vaccine Doses
The Department of Defense on Monday announced a $3.3 billion contract was awarded to Moderna last week for the production of hundreds of millions of additional doses of its COVID-19 vaccine. The DoD said the order was for 200 million doses of the company’s double-shot vaccine, scheduled for completion in March of next year. (De Lea, 6/21)
The Wall Street Journal:
Moderna Plans To Expand Production To Make Covid-19 Vaccine Boosters, Supply More Countries
Moderna Inc. is adding two new production lines at the rebuilt former Polaroid plant where it manufactures its Covid-19 vaccine, part of a push to prepare for making booster shots and the future of the pandemic. At a site brimming with new steel production tanks and heavy equipment, construction workers in neon safety vests are working to get one new line up and running by fall and the other by early 2022. (Loftus, 6/21)
Reuters:
EU Takes Up Option To Buy 150 Million More Moderna COVID-19 Shots
The European Union has decided to take up an option under a supply contract with drugmaker Moderna that allows the bloc to order 150 million additional COVID-19 vaccines produced by the U.S. biotech firm, the EU Commission said on Tuesday. (6/22)
In other vaccine development and manufacturing updates —
Axios:
The Rising Stakes Of CDC's Vaccine Meeting About Myocarditis Cases
A CDC advisory committee will meet Wednesday to evaluate the risk of heart inflammation in teens who get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Cases of heart inflammation are rare, but they've raised concerns among some experts and scientists — including some whose job it is to sift through those risks and recommend whether to authorize the vaccines for children younger than 12. (Fernandez, 6/22)
PBS NewsHour:
A Mix-And-Match Approach To COVID-19 Vaccines Could Provide Logistical And Immunological Benefits
While it’s now pretty easy to get a COVID-19 shot in most places in the U.S., the vaccine rollout in other parts of the world has been slow or inconsistent due to shortages, uneven access and concerns about safety. Researchers hope that a mix-and-match approach to COVID-19 vaccines will help alleviate these issues and create more flexibility in the immunization regimens available to people. Around the world, different pharmaceutical companies have taken different approaches to developing vaccines. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna created mRNA vaccines. Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson went with what are called viral vectors. The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine is protein-based. (Ferran, 6/21)
CNBC:
Covid Booster Shots: Coronavirus Variants See Calls For Third Shots
Coronavirus vaccine booster shots will likely be needed in the fall, according to experts, who are urging governments to organize them now. It comes as the Delta variant of the coronavirus, first identified in India, continues to spread rapidly across the world. Some countries, like the U.S. and U.K., have already signaled that they could roll out Covid-19 booster shots within a year. Now, pressure is building on governments to mobilize booster shot programs — no easy task given the ongoing uncertainties surrounding the pandemic, vaccines and variants. (Ellyatt and Bishop, 6/22)
