PremiumModerna Inc has said that it has signed an agreement with Spain's Laboratorios Farmacéuticos Rovi SA to scale up the manufacturing and production of its potential COVID-19 vaccine to supply markets outside the United States.
ROVI will procure a new production line and equipment for vial filling and packaging, automatic visual inspection and labeling, and hire more staff to support the production of millions of doses of Moderna's vaccine candidate, the companies said.
Moderna's vaccine was among the first to be tested in humans in the United States and was found to produce protective antibodies in a small group of healthy volunteers in May. The company expects to begin late-stage trials this month.
Top US health official Anthony Fauci has expressed optimism that Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine will very likely be going into advanced phase three clinical trials by the end of July. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said he hopes by the end of this calendar year or the beginning of 2021 that we will have a COVID-19 vaccine.
Meanwhile, five companies developing coronavirus vaccines will testify before a sub-committee of the U.S. House Of Representatives later this month, sharing information about their research and development efforts.
Officials from Merck & Co Inc, Moderna, Pfizer Inc, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson will testify on July 21, the House Committee of Energy and Commerce said on Thursday.
Coronavirus cases in the U.S. has been rising at record pace and has crossed the 3 million mark.
Fauci said on Monday that the current state of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States “is really not good" and a “serious situation that we have to address immediately."
Meanwhile many other countries are also grappling with a surge in coronavirus cases. Hong Kong will close schools again and Australia is tightening inbound travel as governments react to spiking infections. Meanwhile, Japan is forging ahead with steps to reopen the economy even as Tokyo reported a record increase in coronavirus cases.
A coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by a unit of China's Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products has moved into Phase II human trials, the company said on Friday, less than three weeks after it launched clinical trials. (With Agency Inputs)
