Moderna Puts Kenya Plant Plans on Hold as COVID Vaccine Demand Slumps

FILE PHOTO: Moderna logo is seen displayed in this illustration taken, May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Moderna logo is seen displayed in this illustration taken, May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Moderna Puts Kenya Plant Plans on Hold as COVID Vaccine Demand Slumps

FILE PHOTO: Moderna logo is seen displayed in this illustration taken, May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Moderna logo is seen displayed in this illustration taken, May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Moderna said on Thursday it had paused its plans to build a vaccine manufacturing facility in Kenya, following a post-pandemic decline in demand for COVID-19 vaccines.
The company had said in 2022 that it would invest about $500 million in the Kenyan facility and supply as many as 500 million doses of its mRNA vaccines to the continent each year.
It also had plans to start filling doses of its COVID vaccine in Africa as early as 2023.
However, demand for COVID vaccines has since then waned following the end of the pandemic and Moderna has not received any vaccine orders for Africa since 2022, the company said, according to Reuters.
The drugmaker said it had taken more than $1 billion in losses and write-downs related to the cancellation of previous orders.



Taipei Zoo's Veteran Giant Panda Celebrates 20th Birthday

Panda Yuanyuan enjoys her birthday cake for her 20th birthday at the Taipei Zoo in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
Panda Yuanyuan enjoys her birthday cake for her 20th birthday at the Taipei Zoo in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
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Taipei Zoo's Veteran Giant Panda Celebrates 20th Birthday

Panda Yuanyuan enjoys her birthday cake for her 20th birthday at the Taipei Zoo in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
Panda Yuanyuan enjoys her birthday cake for her 20th birthday at the Taipei Zoo in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

With politics set aside, well-wishers gathered to wish the Taipei zoo’s senior panda a happy 20th birthday.
Visitors crowded around Yuanyuan's enclosure to take photos of her with a birthday cake in the shape of the number 20.
Yuanyuan was born in China and arrived in 2008 with her partner Tuantuan. He died in 2022 at age 18 but not before fathering two female cubs, Yuanzai and Yuanbao, now 11 and 4 respectively and still living at the zoo.
Danielle Shu, a 20-year-old Brazilian student in Taiwan, said she found online clips of the pandas an enjoyable distraction. “And I just find it really funny and cute,” The Associated Press quoted Shu as saying.
Giant pandas are native only to China, and Beijing bestows them as a sign of political amity. Yuanyuan and Tuantuan arrived in Taiwan during a period of relative calm between the sides, which split amid civil war in 1949. China claims the island its own territory, to be annexed by military force if necessary.
Faced with declining habitat and a notoriously low birthrate, giant panda populations have declined to around 1,900 in the mountains of western China, while 600 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers in China and around the world.