(Reuters) -Moderna Inc said on Thursday it has agreed to push back some COVID-19 vaccine deliveries to the European Union by several months to later in 2022 or early next year.
Shares of Moderna fell nearly 2% before the bell over the delay, even though the company stuck to its vaccine sales forecast of $21 billion for 2022.
Delivery of the doses were originally planned in the second quarter, the European Commission said in a statement.
The bloc had also tweaked agreements with Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE in April to delay vaccine deliveries by three months as it gears up for a potential booster campaign in the fall.
The region has also seen a drop in demand for COVID-19 vaccines.
The agreement helps “optimise supply arrangements and align them with current demand levels in our Member States”, said Stella Kyriakides, commissioner for Health and Food Safety.
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Switzerland health officials said last week that the country will destroy more than 620,000 expired doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine as demand for the shots drops dramatically.
Under the amended agreement with Moderna, EU countries will also get access to a next-generation vaccine targeted at both the Omicron variant and the original strain, if it is approved.
(Reporting by Manas Mishra and Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)