Moderna and the US government have entered into a supply pact, worth up to $1.74 billion, under which the US has secured 66 million doses of a Moderna COVID-19 bivalent vaccine booster candidate, mRNA-1273.222, with options to purchase up to an additional 234 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine booster candidates from Moderna.

Moderna is advancing two bivalent vaccine booster candidates for the fall: mRNA-1273.222, which consists of Moderna’s primary COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax, plus the Omicron BA.4/5 strain mRNA, and (2) mRNA-1273.214, which contains the BA.1 Omicron strain.

The US government also recently purchased 105 million doses of Pfizer’s/BioNTech’s bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster for potential use later this year (2022), pending US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization and a recommendation by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Pending those FDA and CDC actions, the US Department of Health and Human Services would receive the first deliveries of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine booster doses in early fall 2022. Combined, the two agreements with Moderna and Pfizer would make available to the US approximately 171 million bivalent vaccine booster doses for the fall and beyond, should they be authorized and recommended. Both Moderna and Pfizer agreements include options for a combined approximately 600 million doses, but those options can only be exercised with additional funding from Congress.

The US government has provided $10 billion from COVID-19 response efforts in order to pay for additional vaccines and treatments. The funding for the new agreement with Moderna comes from that reallocated funding.

Source: Moderna and US Department of Health and Human Services