The contract covers 25m doses in total. Moderna will provide the Australian government with 10m doses of mRNA-1273, its existing vaccine against the ancestral coronavirus strain, this year and go on to ship 15m doses of its updated variant candidate in 2022.
Moderna shared initial data from a midphase trial of a vaccine designed to protect against B.1.351, the variant first identified in South Africa, earlier this month. The study found a booster shot with the variant vaccine, mRNA-1273.351, achieved higher neutralizing antibody titers against B.1.351 than a follow-up mRNA-1273 jab.
The clinical significance of the lower antibody titers achieved by first-generation COVID-19 vaccines against some variants is unclear. There is emerging real-world evidence that the ancestral strain Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine provides high levels of protection against B.1.351, contributing to skepticism in some quarters about the need for booster shots.
Governments are interested in booster vaccines, though. The Australian agreement provides further validation of the situation Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel set out on a quarterly results conference call with investors on May 7.
“We’re hearing loud and clear from the market: supply us with more mRNA vaccine for primary series and supply us with more mRNA vaccine in the future for boosters for 2022 and 2023. There is a big shift versus what the market perceived six or nine or 12 months ago, when protein vaccines or adeno vaccines were thought to be the answer to the pandemic,” said Bancel.