"Moderna, Inc. ... and Laboratorios Farmacéuticos Rovi, S.A. ... today announced a collaboration for large-scale, commercial fill-finish manufacturing of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine candidate against COVID-19 (mRNA-1273) at ROVI’s facility in Madrid, Spain", the US company said in a press release.
According to the release, the Spanish company will provide vial filling and packaging capacity by procuring a new production line and equipment for compounding, filling, automatic visual inspection and labeling to support the production of hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine candidate.
"We are very happy about the collaboration with Moderna, whose vaccine against COVID-19 is one of the frontrunners in the race to solve this health crisis. We would be thrilled for ROVI to form part of the solution to this pandemic that is affecting all of us and to support Moderna in supplying it on a wide scale", Chief Executive Officer of ROVI Juan Lopez-Belmonte said, as quoted in the press release.
Earlier in the day, US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci said that Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine would likely be subjected to advanced clinical trials by the end of July and a working vaccine could be ready by the end of 2020 or next year.