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Two pharmaceutical corporations have announced a contract of approximately $2 billion for six hundred million doses of a vaccine, and the first hundred million have been promised before the end of the year.
By Noah Weiland, Denise Grady and David E. Sanger
WASHINGTON – As nations around the global rush to block coronavirus vaccines even before they are ready, the Trump administration wednesday made one of the largest investments to date, delivering a nearly $2 billion contract with Pfizer and a German biotechnology company for one hundred million doses through December.
The contract is part of what the White House calls the Warp Speed project, an effort to drastically shorten the time it would take to manufacture and distribute a functional vaccine. So far, the United States has invested cash in more than a dozen efforts, hoping to develop production capacity for an imaginable breakthrough.
Europe has a parallel effort underway. Germany recently acquired a 23% stake in a German company, CureVac, which President Trump in the past tried to lure to American shores in the hope that his vaccine, if successful, would be distributed first to the United States. A Europe-led fundraising effort in May contributed $8 billion in commitments from global governments, philanthropists and leaders for coronavirus vaccine research, even with the United States absent from the conference.
China, meanwhile, has militarized the effort: researchers related to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences have developed one of China’s leading candidate vaccines, and another Chinese company, Sinopharm Group, announced in June that phase 3 trials would begin in the United Arab Emirates. . Training
Pfizer’s contract, an agreement to make sure the pharmaceutical giant has a market for its work, is the biggest impact of Americans to date. No vaccines have been developed yet and it is unclear whether the Pfizer edition will work. But if the vaccine produced through Pfizer and BioNTech, the German firm, turns out to be effective in clinical trials, corporations say they could produce the first hundred million doses until the end of the year.
Under this agreement, the federal government would get this first lot for $1.95 billion, or about $20 per dose, with the right to earn up to $500 million more, or $600 million in total. Americans would get the vaccine for free. Before it can be distributed, I would want emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration. But the U.S. government doesn’t pay nearly $2 billion until the drug is approved and the first hundred million doses are administered.
Pfizer said large-scale protection and efficacy testing was scheduled to begin this month, with a regulatory review scheduled for October, with no promises guaranteed.
“Based on the good fortune of clinical trials, today’s agreement will allow the delivery of approximately one hundred million doses of vaccine in progression through Pfizer and BioNTech,” said Alex M. Azar II, Secretary of Health, in delivering the agreement.
On Monday, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, an Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company that is preparing a prospective vaccine with the University of Oxford, published information suggesting that their vaccines may simply enhance strong immune responses with only minor side effects.
But unlike AstraZeneca, who also won U.S. government funds, Pfizer won a contract for his previous studies and progression efforts, only for dosages and distribution.
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