It will produce 100 million doses of vaccines against COVID-19, influenza and other diseases annually.
The pharmaceutical industry Modern announced today that it will open factory for the manufacture of messenger DNA vaccines in Melbourne, at Australiaan unprecedented development in the southern hemisphere.
It will be based at one of the country’s leading universities, Monas, and will produce 100 million doses of vaccines against COVID-19, influenza and other diseases annually.
Moderna’s Spikevax against the new coronavirus and the infection it causes was among the first to use so-called messenger DNA technology and was developed during the pandemic.
Vaccines of this type, which can be rapidly developed, harness a molecule to allow the body to identify and fight pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, as opposed to more traditional vaccines, which contain a very small part of the bacterium or of the virus.
Construction of the Moderna plant will begin this year and is expected to be completed in 2024.
For Australia it is not just a matter of public health and science, said today Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, but also for issue “national security”, following the major vaccine shortages the country experienced during the health crisis.
Melbourne, which will host the factory, has experienced one of the longest lockdowns on a global scale to prevent the spread of the virus.
One of the lessons of the pandemic that must be learned, Mr. Albanezi also emphasized, is that “we need to build more things here. We cannot continue to believe that it is normal to depend on global supply chains,” he explained.
“In this part of the world, the region experiencing the most rapid growth in human history, we also have the possibility to project this potential into the Indo-Pacific,” he added.
Australia has experienced a surge in virus infections in recent months, after restrictions were eased. The infection it causes has become the third leading cause of death in the country in 2022. To date, the official death toll has exceeded 12,860 deaths due to COVID-19 out of a total of nearly 9.8 million SARS-CoV-2 infections .
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