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Moderna announced Tuesday that it has received money from the U.S. government to fund a late-stage trial of its mRNA H5N1 bird flu vaccine for humans, as the virus continues to spread rapidly among the nation’s poultry and cattle and has already infected three humans in the United States.
“mRNA vaccine technology offers advantages in efficacy, speed of development, and production scalability and reliability in addressing infectious disease outbreaks, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a press release.
The pharma giant, known for its COVID-19 shot, was awarded $176 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. The agreement also includes options for Moderna to prepare and accelerate production of the vaccine.
Moderna expects to receive results from early-stage trials of its experimental vaccine mRNA-1018, which was tested against H5 and H7 bird flu viruses, this year.
H5N1 is a type of bird influenza virus that was first detected in 1996 in domestic water foul in Southern China. It is highly contagious among birds.
A new outbreak of the virus was first detected in 2020 among wild birds in Europe. It has since spread to domestic poultry and occasionally mammal species, such as foxes, sea lions, and cows.
In the U.S. alone, over 97 million commercial poultry and backyard birds across 48 states have been infected with the virus, according to the CDC. The USDA says cattle herds across 12 states have been affected.
So far, three humans — who were all exposed to cattle — have been infected this year, according to the CDC. All have since recovered. The CDC says the health risk of H5N1 to the general public remains low.
Earlier this month, the WHO reported the that first human death due to another strain of bird flu, H5N2, occurred in Mexico this May. It is currently unknown how the victim was exposed to the virus.
While H5N1 does not currently transmit between humans easily, the World Health Organization warns that as it spreads it has the “potential to mutate to become more contagious.”
The United States also has two traditional bird flu vaccines in development, which are currently being tested with GSK, Sanofi, and CSL Seqirus. The government has ordered CSL to fill and finish 4.8 million doses of those vaccines.
Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary of the U.S. Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, told Bloomberg those doses will “begin to roll off the production lines in mid-July.”