evidence: Moderna began to work on mRNA vaccines in 2010 and was already collaborating with the U.S. National Institutes of Health before the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, the company was able to produce around 100,000 doses of mRNA vaccines of any kind. The COVID-19 outbreak in late 2019 and the decision to produce a vaccine against COVID-19 led the company to scale up its manufacturing capacity to address the possibility of an oncoming pandemic.