Biotechnology company Moderna Inc (Nasdaq:MRNA) on Wednesday announced new capital investments to increase capacity at its owned and partnered manufacturing facilities to increase global 2022 capacity to 1.4bn doses of its COVID-19 vaccine at the 100μg dose.

In a year's time, the company expects the investments will allow additional production of the current Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine as well as provide flexibility in addressing production of potential vaccine boosters that may be needed to address emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2.

The company plans to study dose range of 50μg and lower for variant-based boosters and additional booster of mRNA-1273. If the effective dose for a booster is 50μg, then the 2022 supply could be higher than 1.4bn doses. The 2022 supply will depend on the mix between the authorized COVID-19 Vaccine at 100μg and the dose level authorized for a booster and could supply up to 2.8bn doses in fiscal 2022.

For 2021, the company is increasing its manufacturing from 600m doses to 700m doses globally as well as exploring other approaches to improve throughput and is working to further optimize its operations to potentially deliver up to 1bn doses in fiscal year 2021.

To date, the company has shipped approximately 60m doses globally including approximately 55m doses shipped to the US Government to date and the first approximately 4m doses shipped from its ex-US supply chain.