A medical worker has a Modern COVID-19 vaccination scale on the first day that Orange County residents 65 and older can be vaccinated during a ride through the yard at the Orange County Convention Center on December 29, 2020 in Orlando, Florida .
Paul Hennessy | NurPhoto | Getty Images
Moderna is increasing its Covid-19 vaccine production this year and increasing the minimum number of doses it is expected to make by 20% to 600 million, the company announced on Monday.
The company said it was producing up to 1 billion doses of its Covid-19 vaccine this year. The US is on track to secure 100 million doses of Moderna vaccine by the end of March and an extra 100 million by June, the company said in a statement in Massachusetts.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted Moderna’s Covid-19 emergency clearance for people 18 years and older in the United States in December and began using the drug.
The federal government has agreed to buy 200 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine with the option to secure an additional 300 million doses, the company said.
Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, which uses new mRNA technology and requires two doses given four weeks apart, has also been approved for use in Canada for people 18 and older. The company has agreed to supply 40 million doses of its vaccine to Canada with the option to provide an additional 16 million.
“Our efficiency in providing early provision to the U.S. and Canadian governments and our ability to increase production estimates for 2021 to 2021 are both signals that our production of mRNA vaccines is a success,” said Juan Andres, head of technical operations, said.
The U.S. government under the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed has said it will distribute just under 6 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine after the FDA’s consent for emergency use.
The deployment of the country’s vaccine is slower than officials initially planned. To date, the U.S. has distributed just over 13 million doses of vaccines, but administered only 4.2 million “shots in the arms,” according to data last updated Saturday from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Officials aimed to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of December with Pfizer and Moderna’s dual-dose Covid-19 vaccines.
Alex Azar, secretary of health and human services, defended the operation’s distribution of vaccines Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He said there was a delay between the doses first made available, ordered by the countries and then delivered, which was delayed by the holidays.
However, the U.S. has seen a “rapid uptake” of the vaccine in recent days, Azar said.
‘What we said was to have 20 million first doses available in December. It’s available, “Azar said. It’s unclear what Azar meant when he said the doses were” available, “as only 13 million were distributed across America as of Saturday morning.