• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Exclusive: WHO-backed vaccine hub for Africa to copy Moderna COVID-19 shot

September 14, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 14, 2021

By Wendell Roelf

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – Efforts to develop an African base for COVID-19 vaccine production will focus on trying to replicate Moderna’s shot, but a lack of progress in talks with the U.S. company mean the project will take time, a senior WHO official told Reuters.

The drive to produce vaccines in Africa is designed to help more developing countries access COVID-19 shots after rich nations bought up most of this year’s supply.

Moderna said last October it would not enforce patents related to its shot during the pandemic, raising hopes that other companies might be able to copy it and help boost COVID-19 vaccine production.

In practice, though, it is hard to replicate a vaccine without the information on how it is made, and the World Health Organization-backed tech transfer hub in South Africa – set up in June to give poorer nations the know-how to produce COVID-19 vaccines – has so far not reached a deal with the company.

“The talks have not yielded any results,” Martin Friede, WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research coodinator, told Reuters.

Moderna did not respond to a request for comment.

The case highlights the challenges faced by the WHO as it battles to expand vaccine production to help address the glaring inequalities between rich and poor nations in the pandemic.

More than three quarters of the 5.5 billion COVID-19 shots administered worldwide have gone to high and upper-middle income countries, which make up just over a third of the world’s population.

Currently only 3% of Africa is vaccinated, the African Union’s top health official said last week, compared with more than half of the United States and three quarters of Spain.

Friede said Moderna’s vaccine had been chosen as an abundance of public information and its pledge not to enforce patents made the shot slightly easier to copy than some rivals.

“We have to make a choice now. The deadline is upon us; time to start ordering chemicals. We’ve chosen Moderna,” he said.

But even if the hub manages without Moderna’s help, it could take more than a year to get a distributable vaccine as clinical trials would only begin in the latter half of 2022, he added.

TUSSLE OVER WAIVERS

In May, the United States said it would support waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines in order to help speed an end to the pandemic.

But the idea has faced opposition from pharmaceutical firms, which argue they need to oversee any technology transfer due to the complexity of the manufacturing process.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech separately struck a deal in July for South Africa’s Biovac to help make around 100 million doses a year of their COVID-19 vaccine for Africa. Their shot, like Moderna’s, uses so-called mRNA technology.

However, the deal is to “fill and finish” the vaccine, the final stages of production where the product is put into vials, sealed and packaged for shipping. It does not cover the complicated process of mRNA production, which Pfizer and BioNTech will do at their European plants.

Neither responded to requests for comment.

The WHO has been trying to persuade Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to join forces with its African tech transfer hub.

But COVID-19 vaccine makers have warned that non-authorised producers would compete for vital raw materials and production gear that the established players – most of which have earned huge profits from vaccination – rely on.

Hub consortium partner Afrigen Biologics will produce the initial batch of doses, before transferring the skills and technology to local manufacturing partner, Biovac Institute – both are Cape Town-based – which will mass produce the vaccines.

“This is not something that we are asking industry to give us for free,” Friede said about talks with the companies for access to information, adding that royalties, territorial limitations and other constraints could be built into a deal.

Healthcare analysts doubt the plan can be mobilised quickly.

“There are many steps which will require lots of iterations before they can be ready for prime time commercial grade production,” said Prashant Yadav, a global healthcare supply chain expert at the Center for Global Development in Washington.

(Additional reporting by Michael Erman in New Jersey, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Nikolaj Skydsgaard in Copenhagen and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Editing by Tim Cocks and Mark Potter)

Source Link Exclusive: WHO-backed vaccine hub for Africa to copy Moderna COVID-19 shot

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. Nigeria’s Autochek acquires Cheki Kenya and Uganda from ROAM Africa
  2. Tennis-McIlroy lends support to Osaka over decision to take break
  3. British watchdog demands more power over crypto promotions
  4. BMW confident that sales in China will grow next year – CFO

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild For The First Time
  • How Easy Is It For A Country To Change Its Time Zone?
  • Earth’s First Commercial Space Station Set To Launch In 2026
  • Black Hole Moon: Rogue Planets With Weird Signatures Could Be A Sign Of Advanced Alien Life
  • World’s Largest Ephemeral Lake Set To Turn Iconic Peachy Pink After Extreme Flooding
  • Stunning New JWST Observations Give Further Evidence That Dark Matter Is A Real Substance
  • How Big Is This Spider? Study Explains Why You Might Overestimate Their Size
  • Orcas Sometimes Give Humans Presents Of Food And We Don’t Know Why
  • New Approach For Interstellar Navigation Was Tested On A Spacecraft 9 Billion Kilometers Away
  • For Only The Second Recorded Time, Two Novae Are Visible With The Naked Eye At Once
  • Long-Lost Ancient Egyptian City Ruled By Cobra Goddess Discovered In Nile Delta
  • Much Maligned Norwegian Lemming Is One Of The Newest Mammal Species On Earth
  • Where Are The Real Geographical Centers Of All The Continents?
  • New Species Of South African Rain Frog Discovered, And It’s Absolutely Fuming About It
  • Love Cheese But Hate Nightmares? Bad News, It Looks Like The Two Really Are Related
  • Project Hail Mary Trailer First Look: What Would Happen If The Sun Got Darker?
  • Newly Discovered Cell Structure Might Hold Key To Understanding Devastating Genetic Disorders
  • What Is Kakeya’s Needle Problem, And Why Do We Want To Solve It?
  • “I Wasn’t Prepared For The Sheer Number Of Them”: Cave Of Mummified Never-Before-Seen Eyeless Invertebrates Amazes Scientists
  • Asteroid Day At 10: How The World Is More Prepared Than Ever To Face Celestial Threats
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version