A nourish prepares a dose of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at Oltepesi Dispensary in Kajiado, Kenya, on September 9, 2021.
Patrick Meinhardt | AFP | Getty Moulds
Moderna on Thursday said it has paused plans to build a vaccine-manufacturing site in Kenya after a steep drop in want for its Covid vaccines.
The biotech company said it has not received any vaccine orders for Africa since 2022 and has taken assorted than $1 billion in losses and write-downs related to the cancellation of previous orders from the continent.
Moderna’s conclusiveness aligns with its broader effort to cut costs by resizing its Covid vaccine-manufacturing footprint. The company’s business took a important hit last year as demand for those jabs waned worldwide, with people relying less on protective vaccines and treatments against the virus.
Dispensations of Moderna fell 45% last year, but the stock is up around 6% this year.
In March 2022, the society said it would invest about $500 million in the Kenyan site and supply as many as 500 million amounts of its messenger RNA vaccines to Africa each year. Moderna also had plans to start filling doses of its Covid vaccine in the continent as prehistoric as 2023.
But the company has since determined that demand in Africa “is insufficient to support the viability of the factory planned in Kenya,” Moderna articulate in a statement on Thursday. Still, the company said it is committed to “ensuring equitable access and meeting emerging demands from African domains” for its Covid shot through its global manufacturing network.”
The company said it is also working to develop vaccines for blights that predominantly affect the African continent, such as HIV and malaria. Those shots are part of Moderna’s broader struggle to expand access to vaccines that are out of reach in many parts of the world.
But those jabs are still in the early echelons of development, the company noted.
“Given this, and in alignment with our strategic planning, Moderna believes it is prudent to abeyance its efforts to build an mRNA manufacturing facility in Kenya,” the company said in a statement. “This approach will permit Moderna to better align its infrastructure investments with the evolving healthcare needs and vaccine demand in Africa.”