Most of Moderna’s 125M Covid-19 vaccine doses planned for Q1 for US

Moderna Inc has said it expects to have between 100 million and 125 million doses of its experimental Covid-19 vaccine available globally in the first quarter of 2021.

The company said 85 million to 100 million of those doses would be available in the United States, with 15 million to 25 million available outside the country. For all countries outside the United States, production will take place in Switzerland.

The first-quarter doses are within the 500 million to up to 1 billion doses the company expects to manufacture globally in 2021, Moderna said.

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40 million doses expected in US in 2020

The drugmaker also confirmed that it expects to have 20 million vaccine doses available in the US by the end of 2020.

The company has been working on its US supply and production chain for months, in preparation for the vaccine's expected emergency approval by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

US officials have said they plan to distribute 40 million vaccine doses by the end of the year, including those produced by Pfizer-BioNTech.

That would mean 20 million people vaccinated by the end of 2020, with each person requiring two doses.

The Moderna vaccine will be reviewed by an advisory committee of the FDA on December 17, and could be greenlit for emergency approval soon after.

Results from an early-stage trial showed that Moderna's vaccine, mRNA-1273, produced high levels of binding and neutralising antibodies that declined slightly over time, but remained elevated in all participants three months after the booster vaccination, the company said.

The drugmaker's shares were down about 2 percent at $154.4 after the bell.

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