Moderna vaccine for Australia

The Australian government has reached an agreement with US pharmaceutical company Moderna allowing local facilities to produce up to 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine each year over the next 10 years. Australian government chief Scott Morrison made the announcement on Thursday.

In a statement posted on the government's website, the prime minister said the agreement to produce vaccines under license from Moderna "is part of a 10-year strategic partnership between the Australian federal government, Moderna and the Victorian state government" entered into last December.

The Prime Minister also said the agreement would establish the country's first mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility in the southern hemisphere, capable of producing up to 100 million doses of the drug annually.

"In addition, the facility will create at least 500 new jobs for Australians during the construction phase and about 200 jobs once it is operational," Scott Morrison said.

The new plant is expected to be commissioned in 2024.

Earlier it was reported that the Australian government intends to invest more than A$2 billion ($1.5 billion) to build a pharmaceutical plant in Melbourne. The new plant was planned to be limited to 25 million doses of vaccine per year in its first phase, but was designed to quickly ramp up to 100 million doses per year.

The government also said the plant would produce not only vaccines but also "mRNA drugs for the treatment of cancer and rare genetic diseases".

In the spring of 2020, the Australian government entered into an agreement with the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, which licensed local production of its coronavirus vaccine at the Australian biotechnology company CSL Limited's Melbourne plant.

This agreement expired in January 2022 and production of Vaxzevria in Australia was discontinued. Most of the vaccine produced in Melbourne by AstraZeneca has been donated by Australian authorities as aid to countries in the Asia-Pacific region.