The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that it is considering a proposal from a Vietnamese entity regarding the transfer of mRNA vaccine technology.
Mr. Kidong Park, the WHO representative in Vietnam, stated on May 12: “The vaccine manufacturer in Vietnam has expressed a desire to become a center for the transfer of Covid-19 vaccine technology based on mRNA technology.”
WHO hopes that Vietnam will register for “large-scale production” of mRNA vaccines.
“If Vietnam becomes a center for the transfer of Covid-19 vaccine technology, it will contribute to the domestic supply as well as the regional supply,” Mr. Park said. WHO is currently looking to expand the capacity and scale of vaccine production in low- and middle-income countries to control the pandemic.
Earlier this month, Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan announced that several countries, including Japan, confirmed that “they would transfer Covid-19 vaccine production technology to Vietnam.”
On May 8, at a meeting of the Steering Committee for the Research Program on the Transfer of Vaccine Production Technology for Covid-19, Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long urged for urgent negotiations to purchase the complete mRNA technology package and to participate in WHO’s common technology sharing mechanism.
Healthcare workers preparing a dose of Pfizer vaccine at a vaccination center in Newcastle, England. (Photo: Reuters).
Two mRNA vaccines have been granted emergency approval by WHO, belonging to Moderna and Pfizer. Instead of using the nCoV protein, this type of vaccine only carries the genetic information of the virus into the body. The host then produces the protein and trains the immune system to combat the pathogen.
The greatest advantage of this method is that it does not require the cultivation of pure virus proteins, which saves time and resources in standardization and scaling up production. The vaccine is particularly suitable in situations where the disease escalates rapidly.
In addition to negotiating technology transfer, Vietnam has two entities developing vaccines based on recombinant protein technology and egg-based technology. Among them, Nanocovax is preparing for Phase 3 trials. In Phase 2, all 556 volunteers showed good immune responses.
Currently, Vietnam primarily uses the AstraZeneca vaccine, distributed through the Covax mechanism. On May 16, the Ministry of Health will receive an additional 1.682 million doses of vaccine and distribute them to all localities to implement vaccination efforts.
