As safety concerns over COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson&Johnson–Janssen have led to disruptions in the inoculation efforts of numerous countries relying on those shots, companies like Moderna are attempting to fill the resulting gaps.
The Massachusetts-based biotech company announced on April 29 that it is investing billions to boost manufacturing facilities in Switzerland, Spain and the U.S., building enough capacity to produce up to 3 billion doses of its mRNA-based vaccine through 2022. The company’s vaccine technology differs from that of AstraZeneca and J&J, which both use an adenovirus to deliver COVID-19 virus genes to the immune system—and which both have been have been associated with serious, life-threatening—albeit very rare—blood clots.
