In a sign of its grow­ing com­mit­ment to the con­ti­nent, Mod­er­na will sup­ply up to 110 mil­lion dos­es of its Covid-19 vac­cine to the African Union, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Tues­day. And CEO Stéphane Ban­cel said it’s just the first step.

“We be­lieve our vac­cine can play an im­por­tant role in ad­dress­ing the needs of low-in­come coun­tries giv­en its com­bi­na­tion of high Phase 3 ef­fi­ca­cy against COVID-19, strong dura­bil­i­ty in the re­al-world ev­i­dence, and su­pe­ri­or stor­age and han­dling con­di­tions. We rec­og­nize that ac­cess to COVID-19 vac­cines con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge in many parts of the world and we re­main com­mit­ted to help­ing to pro­tect as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble around the globe,” Ban­cel said in a state­ment.

The first 15 mil­lion dos­es will come in Q4 of 2021, with an­oth­er 35 mil­lion in Q1 2022 and up to 60 mil­lion in Q2 2022. All of those dos­es will be of­fered at the com­pa­ny’s low­est tiered price. It is al­so work­ing on plans to al­low it­self to fill dos­es in Africa as ear­ly as 2023, in a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing that would add an ad­di­tion­al 500 mil­lion dos­es in ad­di­tion to pre­vi­ous deals with Co­v­ax through 2022.

The move comes as Mod­er­na is un­der im­mense pres­sure from the White House and pub­lic health ad­vo­cates. The com­pa­ny has large­ly ex­port­ed its shots to wealth­i­er coun­tries so far, at a time when few­er than 6% of Africa’s en­tire pop­u­la­tion has been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. Just 4% of the world’s dos­es have been ad­min­is­tered in Africa.

“It’s a drop in the ocean for what the needs are,” Fa­ti­ma Has­san, the head of the Health Jus­tice Ini­tia­tive in South Africa, said of Mod­er­na’s an­nounce­ment to the New York Times. “It’s up to 110 mil­lion for a pop­u­la­tion and a con­ti­nent of 1.3 bil­lion.”

In an in­ter­view with End­points News, Ban­cel said that the vi­sion for an African man­u­fac­tur­ing site stemmed from a de­sire to treat trop­i­cal dis­eases that arose dur­ing the time he lived in Asia. Now, as the CEO of a com­pa­ny that’s dou­bled its work­force in the past year, Ban­cel says it seems dif­fi­cult to imag­ine the next 10 years of Mod­er­na with­out a pres­ence in Africa.

Ad­vo­ca­cy groups, such as Pub­lic Cit­i­zen, have called for the com­pa­ny to share its vac­cine’s in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. Mean­while, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s ad­min­is­tra­tion has ques­tioned why the num­ber of dos­es pledged to low­er- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries are much low­er than oth­er com­pa­nies. The Times found 1 mil­lion of Mod­er­na’s dos­es have gone to coun­tries clas­si­fied as low-in­come by the World Bank, com­pared with 8.4 mil­lion from Pfiz­er and 25 mil­lion from J&J.

But Ban­cel said that among oth­er rea­sons, sup­ply con­tracts and ex­port con­trols with the US and Eu­rope are to blame for the slow ex­ports, and the size of Mod­er­na’s staff — 1,500 to­tal em­ploy­ees, com­pared with Pfiz­er’s 29,400 in the US alone — has been a con­tribut­ing fac­tor.

The con­ti­nent now has two di­rect vac­cine sup­ply deals, as it al­so has agreed to 220 mil­lion dos­es of J&J’s sin­gle-shot vac­cine, with an op­tion for 180 mil­lion more.

The com­pa­ny’s boost­er dose was al­so giv­en ap­proval by Swissmedic Tues­day for in­di­vid­u­als 12 years and old­er in pa­tients with a weak­ened im­mune sys­tem. That is to be ad­min­is­tered at least 28 days af­ter the sec­ond dose.

Quebec-based Medicago and its adjuvant partner GlaxoSmithKline said Tuesday that their plant-based Covid-19 vaccine candidate proved to be 71% efficacious against all variants of SARS-CoV-2 in a Phase III trial of more than 24,000 adults in Canada, the US, UK, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.

In addition to showing 75% efficacy against the Delta variant specifically, the companies also said the vaccine proved to be generally safe, with no serious adverse events reported and reactogenicity generally being mild to moderate. The results mean that a regulatory submission will be filed with Health Canada imminently, they said.

Richard Lerner, the esteemed biochemist who pioneered a new way to develop monoclonal antibodies and led Scripps Research Institute to prominence, has passed away.

A spokesperson for Scripps told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Lerner died of cancer in his La Jolla home. He was 83 years old.

Among other things, Lerner’s lab was known for devising a new technique for creating antibodies — deployed as cancer treatments as well as in immunology and disease research — one that the New York Times called a “major advance in biotechnology.” It led to companies making mAbs a thousand times faster, more accurately, at a lower cost. That foundational research cemented the discovery of Humira, which went on to become the world’s best-selling treatment.