Moderna's COVID vaccine keeps 'in touch' with COVAX, but for now follows the Money : Washington Post

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In January 2020, a nonprofit with a mission to develop and equitably distribute vaccines invested $900,000 in a promising but untested bit of technology: Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine.

Announcing the grant, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) touted an alignment of values, namely a shared commitment to global public health. Documents suggest U.S.-based Moderna agreed to uphold the group’s “equitable access principles” — the idea that vaccines should be distributed according to need and at affordable prices.

But more than year later, with the pandemic still raging, Moderna’s successful vaccine is anything but accessible. The company has sold most of the early doses to rich countries. Poorer countries have been almost entirely shut out.

Moderna “seems to have refused to allocate or sell any of their supply beyond the wealthiest countries, the most profitable markets,” said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Asked about the $900,000 grant, equitable access provisions and calls to make the Moderna vaccine widely available, company spokeswoman Colleen Hussey referred The Washington Post to a more than three-month-old news release about third quarter financial results, which noted that discussions with Covax — an initiative to equitably distribute vaccines around the world — were “ongoing.”

Moderna is certainly not the only coronavirus vaccine maker to enter into deals with rich countries. Just 16 percent of the world’s population have snapped up 60 percent of doses, according to an estimate from researchers at Duke University.

But Moderna’s record stands out because none of its doses are yet earmarked for what the World Bank classifies as low-income nations.

Most of its competitors — Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson — have already made commitments to Covax, an effort co-led by its early backer, CEPI, as well as the World Health Organization and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

CEPI said it is still in talks with Moderna about supplying Covax but did not provide details on where things stand. The WHO, which co-leads Covax and advocates for vaccine access, referred The Post to Gavi, which referred The Post to CEPI.

Moderna, meanwhile, is selling the vast majority of its early doses to high-income buyers, including the United States, the European Union and Canada, where immunization campaigns are already underway.

“It is being rolled out in rich countries even though an institution committed to equitable access funded it — it’s outrageous, it’s tragic,” said Zain Rizvi, an expert on access to medicine at Public Citizen, a watchdog group.

CEPI’s investment in Moderna came at a critical moment. The deal was announced Jan. 23, 2020, less than two weeks after Chinese researchers first posted the novel coronavirus’s genetic sequence to an online database and a week before the WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern.
CEPI and Moderna did not reach an agreement for second-stage funding. The relationship did not go further, Grant said, because the company’s funding needs were met elsewhere — by what would become the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.

Moderna got multiple infusions from the U.S. government. By December, it had received $4.1 billion for vaccine development, clinical trials and manufacturing, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, President Biden announced he would be exercising an option to buy 100 million more doses of the Moderna vaccine.

Even while public health organizations call for an end to vaccine nationalism, some seem wary of pushing the companies controlling vaccine supply. Advocates wonder why those tasked with promoting global public health have not called more forcefully for drug companies to disclose the terms of their vaccine contracts, for instance, or urged vaccine makers to transfer know-how to parts of the world in desperate need of vaccine.


Covax “remains in active discussions with Moderna regarding the procurement of the vaccine for global allocation,” Grant said, “And we hope that they will commit to support our mission to ensure global equitable access to covid-19 vaccines along with the other manufacturers in the Covax portfolio.”