Australian government considering helping local manufacture of mRNA Covid vaccines
The Morrison government is actively considering assisting Australian manufacturers to produce mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, such as Pfizer, at scale.
The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, said the government was developing a business case to help CSL, which is producing millions of doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, and other companies to switch focus to mRNA vaccines.
“[CSL] have said publicly that they are also considering moving to an mRNA capacity and others are considering mRNA capacity. So we are doing a business case now to look at that option,” he said.
“It won’t happen overnight, but already we have started that process of the business case and individual firms have expressed interest. So there is that capacity to do that.”
The Pfizer vaccine is recommended for people under 50 by Australia’s health authorities after the AstraZeneca treatment that is being produced domestically was linked to blood clotting, throwing the vaccination program into disarray.
The government has secured a further 20m Pfizer vaccines on top of the original 20m order, but they won’t arrive until late in the year, reigniting calls for Australia to develop its own mRNA production capabilities.
Earlier on Sunday, the home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, who was until recently the minister for science and technology, told Sky News it was “absolutely” possible Australia could manufacture a mRNA vaccine.
“We do have capability in Australia to manufacture mRNA vaccines. We don’t have the capacity to produce at scale at the moment,” Andrews said.
But Hunt clarified her comments, stating it was about having the capacity to adapt to produce an mRNA vaccine.
“The capacity that [Andrews] is talking about is that capacity to adapt … It’s very clear that that would mean that we would have a significant period of scaling up before we could do that,” he said.
The Australian Academy of Science and mRNA experts have urged the Australian government for months to help develop a domestic mRNA manufacturing capability.
In February, the academy used a budget submission to warn that Australia and the region would be vulnerable to supply limitations without the ability to produce mRNA vaccines.
Dr Archa Fox, a leading mRNA expert with the University of Western Australia, told the Guardian that Australia could not currently produce mRNA.
“There are two researchers in Australia who have government funding to develop a mRNA vaccine against SarsCov2 and they have not been able to find a local supplier even for phase 1 clinical trials,” she said. “They can make mRNA vaccine in their labs, but that’s all.”
One of those researchers, Prof Colin Pouton from Monash University told Guardian Australia it would be well worth the government investing in large-scale manufacturing of mRNA vaccines.
He said to get it ready in a few months would require infrastructure and personnel similar to that of a medium-to-large pharmaceutical company.
“We have one obvious option [CSL] and a few other possible solutions,” he said. “One consideration is: over what timescale would we need to be manufacturing? At this stage we don’t know whether Covid-19 vaccines will be needed in future years.
“On the other hand, building up capability for the future is highly desirable, both at small-to-medium scale for new products, and for large scale manufacturing in the future.”
CSL is making the AstraZeneca vac