By Aaron Miller-
The U.S administration has agreed to pay Pfizer nearly $2bn for a December delivery of 100m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine the pharmaceutical company is developing, the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Alex Azar, announced Wednesday.
Under the agreement, the U.S could get over five times that number of doses. (HHS) secretary, Alex Azar, announced on Wednesday. He said:
“Now those would, of course, have to be safe and effective” and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Azar said during an appearance on Fox News. The vaccine candidate is being developed jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech SE, and is still in early clinical trials.
The agreement is part of Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, aiming to produce at least 300m doses of a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine by January 2021.
Under the initiative, the U.S government will speed development and buy vaccines before they are deemed safe and effective so that the medication can be in hand, and quickly distributed once the FDA approves or authorizes its emergency use after clinical trials.
Pfizer and BioNTech said the U.S will pay $1.95bn upon receipt of the first 100m doses it produces, following FDA authorization or approval. Americans will receive the vaccine for free, the companies said.
The president on Tuesday at a briefing that “the vaccines are coming, and they’re coming a lot sooner than anyone thought possible, by years”.
Oxford University in the Uk have also claimed to have a promising vaccine underway.
Next week, a vaccine created by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc is set to begin final-stage testing in a study of 30,000 people to see if it really is safe and effective.
Over 3 million Americans have been infected by the coronavirus and at least 142,000 have died from CovidO-19, the disease it causes, according to Johns Hopkins. Infection rates have been high in many U.S states, with some states like Arizona and Texas much higher than others.