The UK could end up paying more than twice as much as the US for Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine after officials scrambled to iron out a last-minute deal yesterday.
Moderna, based in Massachusetts, today confirmed it had agreed to supply Britain with five million doses of its jab starting in March 2021 if it’s approved by regulators.
And the deal is expected to cost the UK between £24 ($32) and £28 ($37) per dose – while the US, which pre-ordered the jab months ago, will pay just $15 (£11.32) and is expected to get access next month if health chiefs approve the jab.
Britain’s deal could cost a total of between £120million and £165m for enough doses of the vaccine to cover 2.5m people with two jabs each.
The company yesterday became only the second to announce early results of its final clinical trial of the jab, suggesting it may be up to 94.5 per cent effective.
Pharma companies Pfizer and BioNTech last week became the first venture to reveal their early trial results of an almost identical vaccine, which turned out to be 90 per cent effective in a study. The UK is expected to pay £14.71 per dose for Pfizer’s jab.
MPs yesterday questioned whether Britain had backed the wrong horse when it pre-ordered Pfizer’s vaccine and not Moderna’s. Both work in the same way and have proven similarly effective, but Pfizer’s is more difficult to store, while Moderna has never successfull brought a product to market before.
But scientists hit back and said both vaccines are based on ‘risky’, untried technology and to have committed too much money to the projects would have been a worse choice.
Moderna yesterday announced preliminary results from its clinical trial with more than 25,000 volunteers, which suggest its vaccine may be up to 94.5 per cent effective against coronavirus
Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel (left) said that Britain had not ordered any of the company’s vaccine before the trial results were announced yesterday, but a deal was struck before Health Secretary Matt Hancock (right) announced a five million dose supply at 5pm yesterday afternoon
CEO of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, confirmed today that Britain had not struck a deal with the company for any of its vaccine until the trial results came out yesterday.
When news broke at midday that the vaccine appeared to be 94.5 per cent effective in its first major trial, officials spent the day scrambling to get their hands on it.
The Government’s science office said in an immediate statement that it was in ‘advanced discussions’ with the company.
By 5pm a deal had been hammered out and Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced in a TV briefing that Britain had secured five million doses.
Discussions had been ongoing since May, Mr Bancel told Sky News today, but nothing had been finalised.
The European Union also hadn’t completed its pencilled-in deal for a supply of 160million doses.
Authorities placing bigger orders will get cheaper deals, Moderna confirmed today, while countries ordering fewer vaccines will pay more.
A spokesperson said: ‘We have been negotiating pre-approval potential supply agreements, mostly to governments, with smaller volume agreements executed at $32-37/dose.
‘Larger volume agreements are under discussion, with lower prices for higher volumes…
‘Our pricing strategy is the same price for all developed nations.’
The US Government, which contributed $955million (£721m) to the development of the vaccine, will get first access to 100million doses for $1.525billion (£1.15bn).
MPs yesterday hit out at the fact that the Government hadn’t hitched its wagon to Moderna’s project.
Liberal Democrat MP Munira Wilson said: ‘Shame we weren’t part of the EU vaccine procurement programme, or we’d have early access to the Moderna vaccine, as well as Pfizer vaccine.
‘I do hope the UK Government can secure a good deal at this late stage. I daresay Moderna’s negotiating position just got a lot stronger!’
Labour MP Bill Esterton slammed the Government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, saying it was riddled with ‘mistake after mistake’.
‘This time it’s the failure to buy the Moderna vaccine when loads of other countries did,’ he tweeted. ‘Remember Hancock told us we could get a vaccine faster if we didn’t join the EU vaccine purchase scheme. How’s that going?’
But scientists today backed the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce and said the group was right not to take the risk.
Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, told MailOnline the Government’s strategy has focused on ‘securing a number of different doses from a number of different countries’.
‘I wouldn’t say there’s a case of either, or, with these vaccines,’ he said.
Moderna’s vaccine works in the same way as the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, by using genetic material called RNA from the coronavirus to trick the body into making the ‘spike’ proteins that the virus uses to latch onto cells inside the body
He added that it was likely further tests would reveal the Pfizer vaccine can be stored at warmer temperatures for long periods, making it easier to store and transport.
‘Technically, purified RNA is pretty stable,’ he said. ‘They’re erring on the safety side in adopting -70C (-94F) but it’s probably because those are the data that they have now so they cannot go beyond this until they have new data showing its ability to remain stable at warmer temperatures.’
Professor Andrew Preston, an infectious disease expert from the University of Bath, warned that it would have been ‘high risk’ for the UK to back more than one mRNA vaccine.
‘The mRNA vaccines are just one type of vaccine, along with DNA-based, viral-delivery (eg the Oxford vaccine), and more traditional inactivated viral vaccines,’ he told MailOnline.
‘The UK government has been prudent. They’ve invested in a range of vaccine types. The mRNA vaccine is a new platform. The Covid-19 vaccines will be the first licensed use of a mRNA vaccine.
‘As such, it could have been viewed as the most risky of all of the vaccines. So investing in 2 mRNA vaccines at the expense of e.g. a more traditional vaccine would have been viewed as high risk.’
Professor Peter Openshaw, of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, said the UK had been ‘sensible’ to opt for just one of the two mRNA vaccines.
‘I think the government have been reasonably sensible putting in place agreements with a range of vaccines with different technologies,’ he told MailOnline.
‘At the time this procurement was done, we just didn’t know what sort of protection would be likely with any vaccine study.
‘Now trials are coming in, over 90 per cent – this is way in excess of what we were hoping for. We were hoping something over 60 per cent would be great, 50 per cent would be acceptable. But 90 per cent is astonishingly good.
‘It shows the commitment the UK has made to vaccines to be procurement for use in the UK and then offered to other countries.’
The UK Vaccines Taskforce selected jabs based on their expected ability to elicit an immune response in the over-65s, their expected ability to create long-term resilience, likelihood of being approved by regulators, and those that will report their results in 2020 or up to June 2021.
It does not appear that difficulties with the supply chain, such as the need for large fridges to store the vaccines, was considered.
Ms Bingham made no mention of considerations of how a vaccine would be got to people, in an article published in the Lancet at the end of last month.
She included one sentence on transporting vaccines that need to be kept cool: ‘No-one has ever done mass vaccination of adults anywhere in the world before and the two-dose regimen, plus cold-chain restrictions for some vaccines, adds to the complexity of this deployment operation.’
The Vaccines Taskforce, Pfizer and Moderna were all contacted for comment.