Moderna has signed an agreement with Gavi to supply up to 500 million doses for COVAX, the international vaccines-sharing facility, offering the doses at the company’s ‘lowest tiered price’.
As part of the supply deal, Moderna will initially deliver 34 million doses to COVAX in the fourth quarter of 2021, with Gavi retaining an option to procure an additional 466 million doses in 2022. Moderna did not disclose the exact price agreed for the vaccine doses in this deal.
The Moderna vaccine doses will be delivered to the 92 COVAX countries included in the Advance Market Commitment (AMC), which is designed to enable rapid, fair and equitable access to vaccines for low- and middle-income countries.
The agreement closely follows an announcement from the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday that it had given the Moderna vaccine an emergency use listing to prevent COVID-19 in individuals aged 18 years and older.
A WHO EUL is designed to enable potential vaccines to become available globally at a faster rate, by expediting access to products for many countries across the globe.
It is also a prerequisite to supply vaccines to the international vaccines-sharing facility COVAX.
“I am grateful to our Gavi and COVAX partners for their tireless work and to the entire Moderna team for its collaboration to reach this agreement. This is an important milestone as we work to ensure that people around the world have access to our COVID-19 vaccine,” said Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna.
“We recognise that many countries have limited resources to access COVID-19 vaccines. We support COVAX’s mission to ensure broad, affordable and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and we remain committed to doing everything that we can to ending this ongoing pandemic with our mRNA COVID-19 vaccine,” he added.
COVAX is the vaccine pillar of the WHO’s ACT Accelerator – a collaborative initiative co-led by the World Health Organization (WHO) that aims to accelerate development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines.
A number of other major vaccine developers have previously signed supply agreements with COVAX, including Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca, while Novavax recently announced a memorandum of understanding with Gavi.
“We are very pleased to sign this new agreement with Moderna, giving COVAX Facility participants access to yet another highly efficacious vaccine,” said Seth Berkley, chief executive officer of Gavi.
“Expanding and having a diverse portfolio has always been a core goal for COVAX, and to remain adaptable in the face of this continually evolving pandemic – including the rising threat posed by new variants. This agreement is a further step in that direction,” he added.