The United States has committed $1.2 billion to secure the supply of 300 million doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine being developed in the United Kingdom.
AstraZeneca announced on Thursday that it had received more than $1 billion from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for the development, production, and delivery of a new vaccine against the COVID-19 virus.
The company said the first deliveries of vaccine were expected to begin in September, with manufacturing capacity for 1 billion doses secured through 2020 and into 2021. More than 100 million doses are committed to the U.K.
“This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation Warp Speed’s work toward a safe, effective, widely available vaccine by 2021,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
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On Sunday, former Food and Drug Association head Scott Gottlieb said on CBS News’s Face the Nation that a fall vaccine could serve to “ring fence an outbreak” in a city or to inoculate a “certain portion of the population on an experimental basis.”
The White House recently appointed Moncef Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive, to oversee the U.S. coronavirus treatment and vaccine program.
The usual lead time for the development of a new vaccination is five to seven years. More than 70 coronavirus vaccines are currently under development worldwide.
“There’s never been a vaccine project anywhere in history like this,” Trump said last week of the White House’s race to secure a vaccine “by the end of the year if we can.”
