A medical worker holds a vial of the Modern COVID-19 vaccine on the first day that Orange County residents aged 65 and over can be vaccinated at a facility at the Orange County Convention Center on December 29, 2020 in Orlando, Florida .
Paul Hennessy | NurPhoto | Getty Images
Moderna is increasing its production of Covid-19 vaccines this year, increasing the minimum number of doses it expects to make by 20% to 600 million, the company announced on Monday.
The company said it is working to produce up to 1 billion doses of its Covid-19 vaccine this year. The United States is on track to guarantee 100 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine by the end of March and another 100 million by June, the Massachusetts-based company said in a statement.
The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency clearance of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine to people aged 18 or older in the United States in December and initiated the initial launch of the drug.
The federal government agreed to buy 200 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine with the option of securing an additional 300 million doses, the company said.
Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, which uses a new mRNA technology and requires two doses administered four weeks apart, has also been authorized for use in Canada for people aged 18 and over. The company has agreed to supply Canada with 40 million doses of its vaccine, with the option of providing an additional 16 million.
“Our effectiveness in providing advance supplies to the governments of the United States and Canada and our ability to increase production estimates for 2021 are signs that our expansion of mRNA vaccine production is a success,” said the head of technical operations at Moderna, Juan Andres, in a statement.
The U.S. government, under the Trump administration’s Warp Speed operation, said it would distribute just under 6 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine after the FDA’s emergency use authorization.
The vaccine’s launch in the country has been slower than the authorities originally planned. So far, the United States has distributed just over 13 million doses of vaccines, but administered only 4.2 million “vaccines”, according to data last updated on Saturday from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authorities planned to vaccinate 20 million people with the two-dose vaccines Covid-19 from Pfizer and Moderna by the end of December.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar defended the distribution of the operation’s vaccine on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program on Monday. He said there was a gap between the time the doses were first made available, requested by the states and then delivered, which was delayed by the holiday.
However, the United States has seen “rapid absorption” of the vaccine in recent days, Azar said.
“What we said that our goal was actually to have 20 million first doses available in December. They are available, “said Azar. It is unclear what Azar meant when he said the doses are” available “since only 13 million were distributed across America on Saturday morning.