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Moderna Inc. late Wednesday promised to boost its investments to be able to double its COVID-19 vaccine-making capacity by 2022.
Moderna expects that investments at owned and partnered plants will increase global capacity for the vaccines to about 1.4 billion doses by next year, with an actual output depending on dosages and tweaks due to virus variants.
Moderna also announced it increased its 2021 manufacturing plan to 700 million of the much sought-after shots, from 600 million.
Shares of Moderna MRNA, -3.58% rose more than 4% in the extended session Wednesday after ending the regular trading day down 3.6%. The stock has gained around 680% in the past 12 months, compared with gains around 22% for the S&P 500 index SPX, +1.14%.
Specific investment amounts were not disclosed. The money will also provide “flexibility” to develop potential vaccine boosters that may be needed to fight emerging variants of the novel coronavirus, the company said.
“We believe from our discussions with governments around the world that there will continue to be significant demand for our COVID-19 vaccine and we now are committed to materially increasing our manufacturing capacity,” Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said in a statement.
“Because of the high efficacy of our COVID-19 vaccine and our ability to quickly develop variant vaccines to help boost the immune system of vaccines, there is increased demand,” he said.
Earlier Wednesday, Moderna said its COVID-19 vaccine tweaked for the South African variant of the virus was ready for testing.
Moderna has shipped about 60 million doses globally, including some 55 million doses shipped to the U.S. An additional about 33 million doses have been produced in the U.S. and are filled in vials in the final stages of production and testing, the company said.
Moderna expects to complete delivery of the first 100 million doses to the U.S. government by the end of the quarter, a second 100 million-dose batch by the end of May, and the third 100-million batch by the end of July.
Moderna’s vaccine received an emergency-use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December.
