Eggs will remain expensive… in the US: Trump considers removing Moderna contract for bird flu vaccine

U.S. health officials are re-evaluating a $590 million contract for bird flu vaccines that the Biden administration awarded to Moderna , people familiar with the matter said.

The review is part of a government effort to examine spending on vaccines based on messenger RNA, the technology that powered Moderna ’s COVID-19 vaccine. The avian flu vaccine contract was awarded to Moderna in the final days of the Biden administration, sending the company’s stock up 13 percent in the two days after the announcement on Jan. 17.

The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented bird flu outbreak that has affected dozens of livestock and poultry flocks across the country, sending egg prices skyrocketing. While human cases have been relatively rare, the virus has caused deaths in the past and experts are concerned it could become more transmissible and dangerous.

“While it is critical that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services support pandemic preparedness, four years of failed oversight by the Biden administration have made it necessary to review vaccine production arrangements,” an HHS spokesperson said in a written statement.

Moderna shares fell as much as 6.6 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

Moderna said in January that it was preparing for a large, late-stage trial of its vaccine, after successfully completing an early-stage trial last year. Without funding, that large trial might not happen.

Messenger RNA technology was the basis for the COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, which worked with partner BioNTech SE on their pandemic vaccines. The technology allows vaccines to be designed and manufactured more quickly than traditional methods.

The government also ordered Vaxart to halt much of its work on a federal contract for research into a new oral Covid vaccine, according to regulatory filings. The contract was worth up to $453 million, according to government records.

Moderna has been under pressure to find new revenue streams as its Covid-19 vaccine sales are falling sharply and it spends heavily on its pipeline. The contract was approved with some urgency, the people said, because of concerns that the Trump administration would be less willing to fund vaccine makers.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was sworn in two weeks ago as head of HHS , has been an outspoken critic of Covid vaccines. At a 2021 meeting of the Louisiana House of Representatives to oversee Covid vaccination, he called it “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Government funding for research and development of vaccines like Moderna’s, as well as therapies for potential pandemic threats, comes from an office within HHS. Early in the pandemic, Moderna won a $483 million contract from the office to develop, test and scale manufacturing of an mRNA-based COVID vaccine .

Moderna was embroiled in a patent dispute with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over credit for the company’s vaccine. The government objected after Moderna listed only the company’s scientists as inventors on a patent application, calling NIH researchers who helped develop it “collaborators.”

Kennedy has recently backed off some of his anti-vaccine rhetoric, but key meetings on vaccines and public health campaigns overseen by HHS agencies have reportedly been suspended . Health care workers at an immunization unit at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were also recently fired, Bloomberg reported last week.