Moderna CEO Responds to Criticism of Access to COVID-19 Vaccines

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In a memo obtained by Insider, Moderna’s CEO rebuked criticism of its vaccine supply to poorer countries. The note came after a US official, Dr David Kessler, said he expected Moderna to “step up”. “We are now being criticized for having kept our promises,” CEO Stéphane Bancel wrote to employees.

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel on Friday defended his company against growing criticism of its vaccine distribution in the poorest countries.

In an internal memo sent to Moderna employees and obtained by Insider on Friday, Bancel said the $ 135 billion biotech was misrepresented as prioritizing rich countries to provide its shot. Moderna has confirmed the authenticity of the memo.

“It may seem unfair that we are now being criticized for doing what we promised, and some of those voices may be misleading,” Bancel said in the note. “But these voices are a distraction from the work we’re always here to do.”

In recent weeks, the White House, lawmakers and activists have accused biotechnology of not doing enough to make its COVID-19 vaccine available to the poorest countries.

Moderna and several other pharmaceutical companies have agreed to work with Covax, a global plan to secure vaccine doses for the poorest countries, to deliver vaccines at reduced costs.

But Moderna shipped far fewer doses to low-income countries than other vaccine developers, The New York Times reported over the weekend.

Dr David Kessler, scientific director of the White House COVID-19 response team, said Thursday that Moderna has additional capacity to produce doses of the vaccine.

“We expect Moderna to scale up as a business,” Kessler said.

The vaccine is Moderna’s first and only commercial product. Biotechnology made $ 4 billion, after spending, in the first half of 2021.

Bancel said in the note that Moderna worked with the US government to deliver 50 million doses to Covax, but was limited by promises it made to other buyers.

Bancel said the company will step up deliveries to Covax. It plans to ship 34 million doses by the end of 2021 and an additional 116 million doses in the first three months of 2022.

A Moderna scientist working on research at the Biotechnology R&D Center in Norwood, Massachusetts. Franco Sacchi / Insider Read Bancel’s full letter to Moderna staff:

Dear Moderna team,

Over the past few days, you’ve probably seen a story in the press that inaccurately depicts our efforts to fight the pandemic and provide global access to our vaccine.

You deserve better. Or at least you deserve honest accounting of your contributions. This letter is my little attempt to do you that justice.

I know most of you have worked nonstop for the past two years, nights and weekends, birthdays, weddings and funerals. There will never be a full account of your sacrifices: the costs at home, the burden on your marriages and families, the toll on personal health. And now you are asked to endure more.

But for a moment, let’s celebrate the simple truth.

Our small company of 2,000 very special, highly skilled and incredibly committed people produced more than 500 million doses of vaccine to fight the pandemic throughout this summer. The numbers hide humanity. This represents approximately 250,000 doses of vaccine per person in Moderna. The closest comparator I know of is that of companies that have manufactured 20,000 doses of vaccine per person. No one can claim to have done more.

A year ago, when we told the world that we thought we could make 500 million doses, few believed us. The pharmaceutical industry as a whole manufactures 500 million doses of influenza vaccine each year; who were we?

But we knew the truth about how we had prepared. That in the 10 years before the pandemic, we had created the field of viral mRNA-LNP vaccines. We were the only company to show the potential of mRNA-LNP vaccines in humans. We had gone to 9 to 9 in the first clinical trials against different viruses. We had raised and invested $ 2.5 billion to invent and prove the technology. And we had built our own factory from scratch in Massachusetts from 2017 to 2019. We had been preparing for 2020 all of our lives. So we stepped forward and said we could do 500 million to 1 billion doses in a year from zero in 2019.

Of course, we didn’t do this alone. We would not have succeeded without the incredible work of our partners and suppliers. They are equal heroes. We also needed the financial support of so many people. To develop the vaccine and build a 500 million-dose supply chain from scratch, it took $ 5 billion in 2020. This included $ 2.9 billion in deposits on vaccine orders from government customers ( $ 601 million), $ 1.9 billion raised in 2020 from new investors, and $ 210 million in reimbursement from BARDA for development. This financial support from the private sector and governments around the world has enabled you to achieve the impossible over the past year.

One of the hardest things about recent reviews is that we have worked to keep our promises. Almost all the doses we did and over 500 million went to the governments that bought us last year. Those who have tried our luck. It may seem unfair that we are now being criticized for doing what we promised, and some of these voices can be misleading. But these voices are a distraction from the work we are still here to do. We need to focus on those who are still suffering and who do not yet have our vaccine. It is for them that we are expanding our manufacturing to more than 2 billion doses in 2022.

You should always ask yourself if we are doing the right thing. This is a fair question and I want you to have the information you need to decide for yourself.

My letter last week described the five pillars of our strategy to improve access in low income countries. We entered into our agreement with COVAX in May 2021 to deliver up to 500 million doses to low-income countries, of which 210 million doses have been ordered for delivery until next spring. Due to promises we made to others, we were unable to deliver any of these doses until Q4 of this year, but we have been working hard to get COVAX doses earlier by other means, in partnership with the US government and other countries to enable donations of 50 million doses to COVAX through September. We will deliver 34 million additional doses to COVAX this quarter, this time directly from Moderna. Together this would represent approximately 10% of our overall supply for this year. And the 116 million doses that we will deliver to COVAX in the first quarter of 2022 will represent approximately 20% of our expected supply during this quarter. I wish we could do more and faster, but I think we can all be proud of what we’ve done.

Finally, the fight is not over; so we must continue to find ways to take care of each other. I know the price to pay to hear chants and protests outside our doors from those angry we have vaccinated against to those angry that we haven’t done enough yet and how hard it can be to come work every day during a pandemic. We will make all the investments we can think of to support you, but the most important thing is that we need to support each other. We are not alone. We need to find ways to ease the burden on those of us who have carried the most weight. For those who cannot help directly, continue to help in any way you can. It’s a lot to ask you to keep going until we’ve done 1 million doses per person, but we have to. We can protect another billion lives.

And it will get better. Yesterday we took one more step to make things a little easier thanks to the FDA’s VRBPAC unanimous vote in favor of our EUA amendment for a 50g booster. The lower dose will allow us to deliver up to 1 billion additional booster doses to the world in 2022.

None of this would be possible without you. I am touched every day by your commitment. On behalf of so many people: thank you for what you have done. It was impossible. And thank you for what you will do in the coming months to help beat this pandemic everywhere. It will be no less historic.

Cheers,

Stephane

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