Moderna has no plans to share its COVID-19 vaccine recipe

In an interview with The Associated Press, Nubar Afyan also reiterated a pledge Moderna made a year ago that patent infringement would not be imposed on anyone else making a coronavirus vaccine during the pandemic.

“We didn’t have to do that,” Afyan said. “We think it was the right, responsible thing to do.” He added: “We want it to help the world.”

The United Nations health agency has pressured Moderna to share its vaccine formula. Afyan said the company analyzed whether it would be better to share messenger RNA technology and determined it could expand production and deliver billions of additional doses in 2022.

“Within the next six to nine months, the most reliable way to make high-quality vaccines and in an efficient way will be if we make them,” Afyan said. Asked about appeals to the World Health Organization and others, he argued that such arguments assumed “we couldn’t get enough capacity, but in fact we know we can.”

Moderna “went from zero production to having 1 billion doses in less than a year,” Afian said, referring to the Massachusetts-based company’s sprint to develop the vaccine and produce it in large quantities. “And we think we’ll be able to go from 1 to 3 billion in 2022”.

“We think we’re doing everything we can to help this pandemic,” Afyan said, citing the company’s increased production and its pledge on patent infringement.

He said $2.5 billion (about 2.1 billion euros) and 10 years were spent developing Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine-making platform.

“Others joined the hunt when COVID-19 came along, and we are glad to see that capacity has increased beyond what Moderna could do,” Afyan said.

When asked how successful he thought others might be if starting from scratch using Moderna Patent, he declined to speculate. But “it’s hard for me to imagine that they’ll be able to get any meaningful scale in a short time frame as to the quality of course for 2022”.

Asked about recent criticism that Moderna is offering its vaccine primarily to wealthy countries, while low-income countries clamor for the product, Afyan said the company has offered “quite significant” production to poorer countries. Supplies, mostly through his work with the US government, who contracted supplements with the company early in the pandemic.

Moderna is working with several governments “to help them secure supplies for the express purpose of supplying them to low-income countries,” the executive said.

“The EU and the US government have far more supplies than they will be able to use,” said Afyan, co-founder of Moderna.

Separately, Moderna made a commitment in May to the United Nations-backed vaccine program Covax to arrange a total of 500 million to go to poorer countries. He said that probably the supply of 40 million doses will start in the last three months of this year, with the rest shipping next year.

The COVID-19 vaccine is Moderna’s only commercial product. The company last week announced plans to open a vaccine plant somewhere in Africa. Afyan said that he is hopeful that a decision on the exact location will be taken soon. Even so, it can take years to get the plant up and running.

Afyan spoke on the last day of his trip to Italy to meet with Pope Francis, who has called for universal vaccine access. He also appeared in Venice to promote the Humanitarian Award.

Co-founded by Afeyan, the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative aims to “empower modern-day saviors to offer life and hope” to those who urgently need basic humanitarian assistance. Through the award, the organization has awarded $5 million in grants to more than 30 humanitarian projects. To help people overcome war, famine, genocide, human rights violations and other challenges.