SYDNEY, Australia —
COVID-19 vaccine maker
Moderna announced Monday that it will open an mRNA vaccine manufacturing
facility in the Australian city of Melbourne, a first for the southern
hemisphere.
اضافة اعلان
The project will be based at one of Australia’s
largest universities, Monash, and will produce 100 million vaccine doses a year
for COVID-19, influenza, and other diseases.
Moderna’s Spikevax was one of a new class of inoculations
developed during the coronavirus pandemic that uses a cutting-edge technology
called messenger RNA (mRNA).
These vaccines can be quickly developed and use a
molecule to teach the body to identify and fight a pathogen, such as COVID-19,
unlike traditional jabs, which contain a small piece of bacterium or virus.
Construction on the mRNA manufacturing facility is
set to begin this year and be complete in 2024 — with vaccines production
starting soon after.
Australia’s Prime Minister
Anthony Albanese said
Monday that it was a “show of faith” in Australia by vaccine giant Moderna.
For Australia, the facility is not only about health
or science, he said, but “also about national security” after the country
experienced serious vaccine shortages during the pandemic.
Melbourne, where the Moderna facility will be based,
faced one of the world’s longest lockdowns as authorities tried to contain the
virus.
Albanese said a lesson from the pandemic was that
“we need to make more things here. We can’t continue to assume that it’s okay
to be at the end of global supply chains”.
“In this part of the world, in the fastest-growing
region in the world in human history, we have an opportunity to project that
capacity into the Indo-Pacific as well,” he said.
In recent months, COVID-19 cases have spiked in Australia
after restrictions were loosened. The virus became the country’s third-most
common cause of death in 2022.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
