Moderna to Increase Global Supply for COVID-19 Vaccine

Moderna has unveiled plans for new funding commitments to increase supply at its owned and partnered manufacturing facilities, which it expects will increase global 2022 capacity to up to 3 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, depending upon the mix between the authorized Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine at the 100 μg dose level and potentially lower doses of the company’s variant booster candidates and pediatric vaccines, if authorized.

These investments allow for a doubling of drug substance manufacturing at Lonza’s Switzerland-based facility, a more than doubling of formulation, fill and finish and drug substance manufacturing at Rovi’s Spain-based facility, as well as a 50% increase of drug substance at Moderna’s facilities in the U.S.

When completed, the investments will also result in an increase in safety stock of raw materials and finished product used to deliver committed volumes. The company will begin making investments at its owned and partnered manufacturing facilities in 2021, with increased production from these investments expected to ramp up in late 2021 and early 2022. The company also raised its 2021 manufacturing supply forecast to between 800 million to 1 billion doses.

The increases are in addition to the recently announced increases in formulation, fill and finish in the U.S. with Catalent and Sanofi. In addition, Moderna is in advanced negotiations for other agreements.

“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,” said Stéphane Bancel, CEO, Moderna. “We are hearing from governments that there is no technology that provides the high efficacy of mRNA 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 U.S. will allow us to deliver up to 3 billion doses in 2022, depending on the mix of product between primary series of vaccination and variant boosters. 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.”