Extra £47.6 million for Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre
Sunday, 21 March 2021 10:16
The Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) has been
granted an additional £47.6 million to support the expansion and
acceleration of the programme. The VMIC will be the UK’s first
national vaccines manufacturing and innovation facility and will be
able to respond to pandemics by producing millions of doses
quickly. The funding will support work already...Request free trial
The Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) has
been granted an additional £47.6 million to support the
expansion and acceleration of the programme.
The VMIC will be the UK’s first national vaccines
manufacturing and innovation facility and will be able to
respond to pandemics by producing millions of doses
quickly.
The funding will support work already underway to:
-
expand the capacity twenty-fold so that the UK has
a highly specialist manufacturing centre that, in a
pandemic situation, can make up to 70 million doses
within a 6 month period
-
accelerate the timeline for VMIC
to be operationally ready so it can support the
national response to (coronavirus) COVID-19
VMIC
has been granted almost £215 million of government
funding in total to date.
In May 2020, the government confirmed additional
funding of £93 million to the VMIC
- which was first announced in 2018 - to expand and
fast track the project. The new £47.6 million is in
addition to this funding and will support the delivery
of this highly specialist facility during these
unprecedented, challenging times.
Through the VMIC,
the government also invested £8.75 million in the
set-up of a rapid deployment facility at Oxford
Biomedica in Oxfordshire, which was a major milestone
in increasing UK manufacturing capability of viral
vector vaccines. By October 2020, these 2 additional
manufacturing sites were approved by the Medicines and
Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, and are
currently producing the Oxford University/AstraZeneca
vaccine.
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