Australia's first fully integrated mRNA vaccine facility could help the nation avoid billions in costs from the next pandemic, as Moderna defends a controversial government deal as a necessary investment.
Having an onshore capability to manufacture mRNA vaccines from start to finish could save the nation $4.8 billion during pandemics across the next 30 years, an independent report by Oxford Economics reveals.
Australia could avoid $3.25 billion from lockdown-related mental health and wellbeing impacts, $1.33 billion in lockdown costs, $219 million from reduced mortality risk and $15 million from shipping vaccines from overseas.
With an almost two per cent likelihood of a pandemic every year in the next three decades, the facility would give Australia sovereign capabilities to scale up vaccine production to 100 million doses annually, Moderna's Australia general manager Michael Azrak said.
"(It's) the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere, and probably one of a handful of fully end-to-end integrated facilities anywhere in the world," he told AAP.
The company has committed to supporting pandemic preparedness, promoting a research and development ecosystem and supporting the development of the mRNA workforce and supply chains.
It has flagged a series of updated and next-generation vaccines in the pipeline to be manufactured at the site, and is investigating newer technologies around personalised cancer treatments and other rare diseases.
The report comes as the Australian facility faces scrutiny over its 10-year-deal signed in 2021 with the former Morrison government and the Victorian government reportedly worth $2 billion.
The deal reportedly allows Moderna's vaccines to bypass the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee assessment - which appraises medications' safety and value for money before recommending they are subsided by the PBS - and commits the government to annual minimum purchases of vaccines.
Mr Azrak said all of Moderna's vaccines would continue to go through the committee's assessment process.
He said the agreement with the government included an "annual pandemic preparedness fee" which allowed the site to stay "warm" and scale up production quickly, and an annual minimum vaccine purchase which enabled the site to be continually operational.
"If Australia is looking for significant investments to bring such technologies onshore, then manufacturers need that certainty of an off-take into the future," Mr Azrak said.
"We just can't economically bring, especially given the size of our population, such investments to bear and to continue to keep these sites 'warm'."
Moderna is also facing international headwinds, with US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr cutting $US500 million ($A758 million) to mRNA vaccine research and development, weeks after the company said it would slash 10 per cent of its global workforce due to declining COVID-19 vaccine sales.
Mr Azrak said there was no impact in Australia or on its investments in its immediate pipelines, but the global company would need to look at other ways to fund products down the track.
"Our focus and commitment is to continue to fulfil all of our obligations that we've made to the Commonwealth in our strategic partnership," he said.