The Trump administration has canceled a $766million government grant awarded to Moderna to develop a vaccine against bird flu.
The company said it was notified that the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) had withdrawn funds awarded by the Biden administration to pay for development and purchase of its experimental shot.
The HHS said an investigation found the project did not meet the scientific standards or safety expectations required for continued federal investment.
The new vaccine, called mRNA-1018, used the same technology that allowed development and rollout of vaccines to fight Covid-19 in record time.
HHS boss Robert F. Kennedy Jr has expressed deep skepticism regarding vaccines, including the Covid shots — despite real-world evidence they saved millions of lives.
The move comes despite growing concerns about the H5N1 bird flu strain that is tearing through poultry and dairy farms in the US
At least 70 people in the US have been sickened and one person died.
Scientists fear that continued mutation of the virus could allow it to become more virulent or more easily spread in people, with the possibility that it could trigger a pandemic.
The Trump administration has canceled $766 million awarded to drugmaker Moderna to develop a vaccine against potential pandemic influenza viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu
Moderna received $176 million in July 2024 and was due to receive an extra $590m after the package was approved in January under Biden.
The January award would have supported a late-stage clinical trial that could have determined the vaccine’s efficacy against pandemic viruses, including bird flu.
The shot had already been tested in 300 healthy adults to gauge its safety.
A Moderna spokesman said at the time: ‘While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in this interim analysis.’
It’s uncertain whether Moderna will continue developing its bird flu vaccine without government funding.
So far, the H5N1 outbreak has affected nearly 1,000 dairy cow herds.
The US poultry industry is at significant risk, say experts from the Global Virus Network (GVN), particularly in areas with high-density farming and where personal protective practices may be lacking.
Since 2022, more than 168 million poultry in the US has been lost or culled due to the bird flu outbreak in America, which has caused the price of eggs to skyrocket.
Although human-to-human transmission has not yet been observed, experts caution that mutations and assortments — when two viruses simultaneously infect a host and exchange genetic material — could raise the risk of it occurring.
The first US bird flu death was reported in January, with a person in Louisiana passing away after being hospitalized with severe respiratory symptoms.
Health officials said the person was older than 65, had underlying medical problems and had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock.
No other details were revealed. They also said a genetic analysis of the patient’s infection suggested the bird flu virus had mutated while inside their body, which could have caused a more severe illness.
H5N1’s growing presence in the environment increases the chances people will be exposed, and potentially catch it.
Situation summary of confirmed and probable human cases of bird flu since 2024
Many experts, including officials at the World Health Organization, have criticized the US’ response to the outbreak.
Experts have described it as a pandemic ‘unfolding in slow motion.’ Until the end of 2024, nearly all testing of cattle and of people exposed to infected cows were voluntary.
Even now, mandatory testing is limited only to cattle moving between state lines.
Cases have also been sporadically recorded in pigs, which has concerned researchers because these animals can catch both human and bird strains of flu – and could be ‘mixing vessels’ for a new strain of bird flu virus.
And infections have been recorded among more than 400 non-bird wild animals in the US since May 2022, including red foxes, skunks, seals and raccoons.
Experts warned these animals may pick up the virus after eating from carcasses of birds that had died from the bird flu.
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