On Mar. 29, 2021, Novavax, GSK and the UK Government Vaccines Taskforce announced an agreement in principle to support manufacturing of up to 60 million doses of Novavax’ COVID-19 vaccine candidate (NVX-CoV2373) for use in the UK.

GSK provided ‘fill and finish’ manufacturing capacity at its Barnard Castle facility in the North East of England beginning as early as May 2021, with a rapid technology transfer between the two companies beginning immediately.

Fill and finish, to be provided by GSK, is the completion stage of vaccine manufacturing, preparing vials of the final vaccine and packaging them for distribution and use. The GSK site at Barnard Castle, which will deliver the vaccine doses under this collaboration, is a specialised facility in GSK’s global manufacturing network, which supports production of GSK pharmaceutical and vaccine products.