Feb 23 (Reuters) – The World Health Organization (WHO) plans
to set up a second hub for training countries to produce their
own mRNA vaccines as part of its project to get COVID-19 shots
made in low- and middle-income countries, its chief said on
Wednesday.

In a speech at a vaccine conference, WHO director general
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus did not name the countries that would
be involved in the expansion of the project.

He said more details would be announced later.

The ministers for health from South Korea, Serbia, Vietnam,
Argentina and Indonesia’s foreign affairs minister are scheduled
to take part in a WHO briefing on the technology transfer hub
later on Wednesday.

The news comes after the U.N. agency set up a technology
transfer hub in Cape Town, South Africa, last year to give
companies from poor and middle-income countries the know-how to
produce COVID-19 vaccines based on mRNA technology.

Afrigen Biologics in Cape Town has used Moderna’s
publicly available vaccine sequence to produce its own version
of the U.S. company’s COVID shot in labs and is working towards
commercial production.

Last week, six African countries – Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria,
Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia – signed up as the first on
the continent to receive the technology to manufacture mRNA
vaccines at scale and according to international standards.

On Wednesday, Tedros said so far 20 countries had expressed
interest in getting training on developing an mRNA vaccine by
the South African hub.
(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru
Editing by Josephine Mason and Mark Potter)