Moderna Inc will be able to produce 500 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said on Friday.
The company has submitted applications seeking emergency use authorization in the United States and the European Union after full results from a late-stage study showed the vaccine was 94.1 per cent effective with no serious safety concerns.
“For 500 million, I am very comfortable we are gonna get there (2021),” Bancel said at the Nasdaq Investor Conference.
The Food and Drug Administration is set to hold an advisory committee meeting on Dec. 17 to discuss the company’s request for emergency authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine.
Bancel said the company has seen renewed demand from many countries seeking additional doses after it reported clinical data.
Earlier on Friday, Moderna extended its contract with the Israeli health ministry to supply an additional 4 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
The company said on Thursday it would supply up to 125 million doses of the vaccine by the first quarter of 2021.
Earlier on Friday, Moderna extended its contract with the Israeli health ministry to supply an additional 4 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
These announcements followed Pfizer‘s admission that it will not hit its 2020 goal of 100 million doses worldwide, instead promising 50 million, enough to vaccinate 25 million people with the two-dose regimen.
Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine was also shown to likely protect people for at least three months in a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) study published Thursday.
Participants who got injected for the firm’s phase 1 safety study earlier this year still had antibody levels well above baseline three months after they got their second booster shot of the vaccine, the new National Institutes of Health (NIH) study found.
REUTERS