US HEALTH officials are re-evaluating a US$590 million contract for bird flu shots that the Biden administration awarded to Moderna, sources familiar with the matter said.
The review is part of a government push to examine spending on messenger RNA-based vaccines, the technology that powered Moderna’s Covid vaccine. The bird flu shot contract was awarded to Moderna in the Biden administration’s final days, sending the company’s stock up 13 per cent in the two days following the Jan 17 announcement.
The US is in the midst of a record-breaking bird flu outbreak that’s affected dozens of cattle herds along with poultry flocks nationwide, sending egg prices soaring. While human cases have been relatively rare, the virus has caused deaths in the past, and experts are concerned that it could become more transmissible and dangerous.
“While it is crucial that the US Department and Health and Human Services (HHS) support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production,” a spokesperson for HHS said.
Shares of Moderna fell as much as 6.6 per cent in trading after US markets closed on Wednesday (Feb 26). The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moderna said in January it was gearing up for a big final-stage trial of its vaccine, after successfully completing an early-stage trial last year. Without funding, that big trial may not happen.
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Messenger RNA technology was the foundation of Covid vaccines from both Moderna and Pfizer, which worked with partner BioNTech on its pandemic shots. The technology allows vaccines to be designed and made more quickly than traditional approaches.
The government also told Vaxart to stop much of the work on a federal contract for research on a new oral Covid vaccine, according to regulatory filings. The contract provided up to US$453 million, according to government records.
Moderna has been under pressure to find new sources of revenue as its Covid vaccine sales fall sharply and it spends heavily on its pipeline. The contract was pushed through with some urgency, the sources said, because of concerns that the Trump administration would be less willing to fund vaccine makers.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, who was sworn in two weeks ago as head of HHS, has openly criticised Covid shots. In a 2021 meeting of a Louisiana House of Representatives oversight meeting on Covid vaccination, he called it “the deadliest vaccine ever made”.
Government funding for research to develop vaccines such as Moderna’s as well as therapeutics for potential pandemic threats comes from an office within HHS. Early in the pandemic, Moderna secured a US$483 million contract from the office to develop, test and scale up manufacturing of an mRNA-based Covid vaccine.
Moderna became embroiled in a patent dispute with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over credit for the company’s vaccine. The government objected after Moderna listed only company scientists as inventors on a patent application, calling the NIH researchers who helped develop it “collaborators”.
Kennedy has recently walked back some of his anti-vaccine rhetoric, but key vaccine meetings and public health campaigns overseen by agencies within HHS have reportedly been paused. Health workers within a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immunisation unit were also recently laid off, Bloomberg reported last week. BLOOMBERG
