Moderna Inc. proposed filling vials with additional doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to ease a crunch in manufacturing as the company approaches the manufacturing of almost a million doses a day.

Moderna Inc. asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for permission to fill the company’s Covid-19 vaccine vials with up to five additional doses to ease a crunch in manufacturing, CNBC reported.

Moderna started development on a booster to the company’s Covid-19 vaccine, which is hoped to work against the recently discovered (and more transmissible) SARS-CoV-2 variant from South Africa.

Hours after being sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden signed 10 executive orders aimed at combating the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.

Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said his company supports Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus-focused plan that is intended to boost vaccination efforts and address the pandemic.

Moncef Slaoui, the GlaxoSmithKline vaccines veteran who has helmed the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed Covid-19 vaccine program, is stepping down from the role ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Publicly traded companies that have been heavily involved in developing therapies and vaccines for Covid-19 have experienced significant spikes in their stock prices from March 2020 to January 2021, including Germany’s BioNTech, which surged 187% in one year.

The United States lost more than 22,000 lives to Covid-19 for the week ended Jan. 10, setting a record for the second week in a row, as new cases also hit a weekly high.

The United Kingdom, which was the first to grant authorization to the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Moderna, is expected to give the green light to the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University this week.

The chief executive of Germany’s BioNTech SE said the biggest challenge facing the company and partner Pfizer Inc. now that their Covid-19 vaccine is authorized for use in the United States will be to scale up manufacturing to meet huge demand.