Saturday, 16 November 2024

Moderna Pauses Plans On mRNA Vaccine Manufacturing Facility

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Moderna has “paused its efforts” to build an mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility in Kenya while it determines future demand for mRNA vaccines on the African continent.

“The demand in Africa for COVID-19 vaccines has declined since the pandemic and is insufficient to support the viability of the factory planned in Kenya. Moderna has not received any vaccine orders for Africa since 2022 and has faced the cancellation of previous orders, resulting in more than $1 billion in losses and write-downs,” the COVID-19 jab manufacturer announced last week.

“Despite these challenges, Moderna is committed to ensuring equitable access and meeting emerging demands from African nations for its COVID-19 vaccine through its global manufacturing network,” it added.

Fierce Pharma reports:

The Africa CDC responded to Moderna’s plans to step back from building a mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility in Kenya, saying the move by the Spikevax maker only “perpetuates” the inadequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic on the continent.

Last week, Moderna announced it was was reevaluating its decision to build a $500 million plant because it hasn’t received any vaccine orders from the continent since 2022. The drugmaker grabbed global headlines in 2021 when it said it was looking to build a manufacturing site on the continent.

Spikevax earned Moderna $17.7 billion in sales in 2021 and $18.4 billion in 2022. However, as the pandemic began to wane and vaccine demand subsided in 2023, the company reported $6.7 billion in sales last year.

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Africa CDC stated:

With the view to mobilise funds and find a responsive solution, African Union established the AU Covid-19 response fund and launched the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) with the African Export and Import Bank (Afrexim Bank). AVAT acquired 400 million vaccines from manufacturers other than Moderna, simply because Moderna vaccines were not made available, despite attempts to buy. In fact, less than 5% of the covid-19 vaccines administered in Africa, were from Moderna. Despite these African efforts, Covid-19 vaccines were still delivered late to Africa, long after vaccines were made available to the developed world.

Through its consortium for Covid-19 Vaccine Clinical Trials (CONCVACT) Africa CDC also played a coordination role in facilitating the start and successful completion of clinical trials during the pandemic, strengthening enablers of high-quality vaccines clinical trials on the continent, and in accelerating post-trial vaccines regulatory approval.

Therefore, to blame Africa and Africa CDC for lack of demand for covid-19 vaccines and therefore the reason to put on hold plans to manufacture vaccines in Africa, only serves to perpetuate the inequity that characterized the response to the Covid–19 pandemic. While other vaccine manufacturers are progressing with their plans and construction in Africa, Moderna is abandoning a commitment to build highly needed and relevant vaccine manufacturing capabilities in Africa, in truth, demonstrating that Moderna’s commitment is in fact not to vaccine equity and access to vaccines, through building manufacturing in Africa.

“Moderna appreciates the strong support received from the governments of the United States and Kenya on this journey. We look forward to a continuing dialogue about future options to support the Kenyan healthcare ecosystem, including as we advance other mRNA vaccines and therapeutics of importance to the African continent through our pipeline,” Moderna stated.


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