The U.S. government has reached a new deal with Moderna for 65 million additional COVID-19 vaccine doses, the Biden administration announced on July 29.
The deal is valued at $1.7 billion.
Moderna will sell doses of its vaccine that target Omicron subvariants, according to the agencies that announced the agreement. The actual contract has not yet been made public.
Moderna and other vaccine makers have been updating their COVID-19 vaccine formulations because the vaccines are based on the Wuhan strain, which has not been prevalent since 2020. The vaccines have proven increasingly worse at protecting recipients as newer variants emerge.
BA.5, an Omicron subvariant that is currently dominant in the United States, bypasses the protection from vaccination and prior infection better than earlier strains, according to emerging data. Prior infection, or natural immunity, continues to hold up better than vaccination, according to the studies….