Moderna (Nasdaq: MRNA) has received a potential $1.74 billion contract to initially produce and deliver 66 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine booster candidate to the U.S. government.
The contract calls for the delivery of the initial doses in 2022 and includes options for the government to buy 234 million more doses of Moderna’s mRNA-1273.222 booster candidate, the company said Friday.
Moderna’s mRNA-1273.222 is a bivalent vaccine containing Spikevax and the Omicron BA.4/5 strain messenger RNA and is being developed in line with the Food and Drug Administration’s latest recommendations.
The company is also advancing another bivalent vaccine candidate, dubbed mRNA-1273.214, which contains the BA.1 Omicron strain.
“Moderna’s mRNA platform is enabling us to rapidly create mRNA-1273.222, a bivalent vaccine that specifically targets Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, the most prevalent variants of concern in the U.S. today,” said Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel.
The Department of Defense said Army Contracting Command is the contracting activity and expects contract work to occur in Cambridge, Massachusetts, through March 27, 2024.
