The Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) has been granted an additional £47.6 million to support the expansion and acceleration of the programme.

The VMIC will be the UK’s first national vaccines manufacturing and innovation facility and will be able to respond to pandemics by producing millions of doses quickly.

The funding will support work already underway to expand the capacity twenty-fold so that the UK has a highly specialist manufacturing centre that, in a pandemic situation, can make up to 70 million doses within a 6 month period. The investment will also accelerate the timeline for VMIC to be operationally ready so it can support the national response to (coronavirus) COVID-19

VMIC has been granted almost £215 million of government funding in total to date. In May 2020, the government confirmed additional funding of £93 million to the VMIC – which was first announced in 2018 – to expand and fast track the project. The new £47.6 million is in addition to this funding and will support the delivery of this highly specialist facility during these unprecedented, challenging times.

Through the VMIC, the government also invested £8.75 million in the set-up of a rapid deployment facility at Oxford Biomedica in Oxfordshire, which was a major milestone in increasing UK manufacturing capability of viral vector vaccines. By October 2020, these 2 additional manufacturing sites were approved by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, and are currently producing the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine.