COVID-19: US Makes Deal with Biotech Company for 100 Million Doses of Potential Vaccine

U.S. President Donald Trump has announced an agreement between the federal government and an American biotechnology company to manufacture and deliver 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

The company, Moderna, is to manufacture the vaccine doses while clinical trials are under way.

 “The federal government will own these vaccine doses — we’re buying them,” Trump told reporters at a White House news conference on Tuesday.

Three vaccine candidates in the United States are in the final stage of human trials.

“We’re on track to rapidly produce 100 million doses as soon as the vaccine is approved and up to 500 million shortly thereafter,” said Trump.

The Trump administration’s latest actions are “increasing the likelihood that the United States will have at least one safe, effective vaccine by 2021,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in a statement.

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The president has recently stated he is optimistic a vaccine for the coronavirus could be ready by the time of the U.S. presidential election in early November.

Trump did not comment on an announcement earlier in the day by Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country has become the first in the world to formally approve a new COVID-19 vaccine, despite a lack of data to back up his claims that the drug is safe to administer to humans.   

 "I know that it works quite effectively, it forms a stable immunity,” Putin said of the new vaccine developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, adding that the vaccine had undergone “all the necessary checks” to ensure its safety.

SOURCE: voanews