Moderna coronavirus vaccine approved for use in the UK
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The Moderna vaccine was approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK’s regulator, three months ago. But as yet Britain has not received a single dose of the 17 million ordered from the US firm. However, that will soon change, ministers confirmed today.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden confirmed on Sunday that the first shipment of the jabs would arrive in the UK in April.
Insisting the vaccination programme remains “on course”, he told The Andrew Marr Show: “We expect that in April Moderna will come.”
He added: “We don’t get into the details of supply chains, but the Health Secretary has indicated that he would expect later this month we’d start to see Moderna.”
The Moderna jab is the third vaccine to be given to Brits, with the Oxford AstraZeneca and Pfizer jabs already being rolled out.
READ MORE: Who paid for the AstraZeneca vaccine to be developed?
Moderna’s vaccine was developed in collaboration with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The vast majority of the jabs are being produced at the US bitech firm’s base in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
They are then sent on to other centres to be filled and finished – with centres including Catalent’s biologics facility in Bloomington, Indiana, and Baxter’s site in Bloomington, Indiana.
However, firms around the world have stepped in to help turn the US operation global.
In Spain, a pharmaceutical lab in Madrid has been filling vials and offers packaging services for hundreds of millions of doses.
Lonza biotech company, which has sites in the US and Switzerland, is helping Moderna supply vaccines outside of the US.
While Recipharm’s drug manufacturing site in France is also helping to produce and package some of the vaccine supply.
The European bases aim to help Moderna fulfil plans to supply 700 million doses of the Covid vaccine across the world in 2021.
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Who funded the Moderna vaccine?
Unlike the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine which is being sold at cost, Moderna stands to make a pretty penny from the jab.
Compared against the £3.60 cost of one dose of the UK jab, the Moderna vaccine costs about £29 per shot – with two doses being required per person for full protection.
The reason the Moderna jab costs more is that it needs to be stored at freezer temperature at -20C.
Moderna has said it expects to see sales in 2021 to be worth $18.4 billion.
while Barclays analyst Gena Wang predicts the US-based firm will see sales of $19.6bn this year, falling to $12.2bn in 2022.
The company was founded in 2010 by a group of investors who are expected to make a fortune from the pandemic.
Chief executive Stéphane Bancel owns nine percent of the shares, which are now worth nearly $5bn.
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