WHO official Martin Friede says Moderna’s vaccine was chosen for the project after its pledge not to enforce patents during the pandemic
14 September 2021 - 18:58Efforts 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 US company mean the project will take time, a senior World Health Organization official says.
In practice, though, it is hard to replicate a vaccine without the information on how it is made, and theWHO-backed tech transfer hub in SA — 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. Only 3% of Africa is vaccinated, the AU’s top health official said last week, compared with more than half of the US and three quarters of Spain.
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. Pfizer and its partner BioNTech separately struck a deal in July for SA’s Biovac to help make about 100-million doses a year of their Covid-19 vaccine for Africa. Their shot, like Moderna’s, uses so-called mRNA technology.
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