Moderna has no plans to share COVID-19 vaccine formula

US: Moderna has no plans to share the formula for its COVID-19 vaccine as executives have concluded that increasing the company's production is the best way to increase global supply, the president of the company.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Noubar Afeyan additionally restated Moderna's commitment a year ago not to enforce patent infringement on anyone making a vaccine against the coronavirus during the pandemic.

“We didn't have to do this,” Afeyan said. "We believe it was the right and responsible thing to do." He added: "We want this to help the world."

The United Nations health agency urged Moderna to share its vaccine formula. Afeyan said the company has analyzed whether it would be better to share messenger RNA technology and determined that it could increase production and deliver billions more doses in 2022.

“Over the next six to nine months, the most reliable way to manufacture high-quality and efficient vaccines will be to manufacture them,” Afeyan said. When asked about calls from the World Health Organization and others, he said those calls assume "that we can't get enough capacity, but in fact we know we can."

Moderna "went from zero production to 1 billion shots in less than a year," Afeyan stated, pointing to the Massachusetts-based company's sprint to develop the vaccine and manufacture it in mass production. "And we think we can go from 1 to 3 billion" in 2022.

"We believe that we are doing everything possible to help this pandemic," Afeyan added, citing the company's growing production and its commitment to patent infringement.

He noted that $ 2.5 billion (around € 2.1 billion) and 10 years has been spent developing the stage that proffers Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine.

“Others followed the course when COVID-19 arrived, and we're happy to see that the capacity has therefore been increased significantly beyond what Moderna could have done,” on her own, Afeyan said.

When asked how well he thinks others could be successful if they started from scratch using Moderna's patents, he refused to speculate. But "it's hard for me to believe that they would be able to gain significant scale in a quick period of time with the quality that we would be able to do with certainty" by 2022.

Asked about recent criticism that Moderna is supplying its vaccine primarily to rich countries while low-income countries are clamoring for the product, Afeyan said the company has provided "fairly large" production to poorer countries, mainly through its working with the US government, which contracted at the start of the pandemic with the company for doses.

Moderna is working with several governments "to help them secure their stocks for the definite intention of supplying to low-income countries," the executive stated.

"There is more supply in the EU and the US government than they will be able to use," stated Afeyan, who is also a co-founder of Moderna.

In addition, Moderna pledged in May to Covax, the vaccination program supported by the UN, to organize the sending of a total of 500 million goats to the poorest countries. He said likely 40 million doses would start shipping in the last three months of this year, with the rest being shipped next year.

The COVID-19 vaccine is Moderna's only business product. The group announced last week that it intends to open a vaccine plant somewhere in Africa. Afeyan stated he hopes a decision will be made soon on an accurate place. Still, it could take years for the plant to be operational.

Afeyan addressed on the last full day of a visit to Italy where he met Pope Francis, who called for universal access to vaccines. He also arrived in Venice to advance a humanitarian award.

Co-founded by Afeyan, the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative strives to "empower the saviors of modern times to offer life and hope" to those in urgent need of basic humanitarian assistance. Through this award, the organization has awarded $ 5 million in grants to more than 30 humanitarian projects to help people recover from war, famine, genocide, human rights violations and other challenges. .