 The U.S. has made a deal with Moderna to develop a pandemic vaccine to treat bird flu. The federal government will pay Moderna $176 million to create the vaccine for humans using the same mRNA technology that allowed rapid development and rollout of vaccines to protect against COVID-19. The vaccine for the H5N1 virus or bird flu could be used to scale up our response to a pandemic. Cases of the virus have been growing among dairy cows in 12 states.