BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — A Bloomington company most Hoosiers never heard of is playing a key role in the processing Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine.
Vice President Mike Pence and some of the nation's top health leaders took a firsthand look at the operation and left impressed.
Every day, a half-million doses of vaccine are being processed off the production lines at Catalent. The facility and its 2,000 workers are running 24/7. If the Moderna vaccine gets FDA approval later this week as expected, Catalent promises to ship 20 million doses by the end of the year and a total of 200 million doses by the middle of 2021
"We often use the word in these times an 'unprecedented' effort, which enabled all of us to do in months what in other times would have taken years." said company CEO Alessandro Meselli.
Pence toured the facility with Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Robert Redfield.
With one vaccine already approved, another waiting approval and two others in the pipeline, "Operation Warp Speed" is moving faster than expected. Azar is optimistic.
"We will have enough product to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of December. We believe we will have enough product to vaccinate 50 million people by the end of January," he said.
Any American who wants to be vaccinated should be able to get the shots by the middle of next year.
The vice president was impressed by what he saw and heard.
"It is a medical miracle and it is in every sense a tribute to American ingenuity and American innovation," Pence said. "We have come to the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic in America."
But there are obstacles to overcome.
Redfield said the biggest threat is "vaccine hesitancy," people who have their doubts about the safety of vaccine and who are unwilling to vaccinated.