The Trump administration has ordered up to 60 crore doses of coronavirus vaccines that Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE are jointly developing. It is the latest in a series of similar agreements with other vaccine companies. US President Donald Trump, during a briefing on Wednesday, described the agreement as “historic.
“We think we have a winner there. We also think we have other companies right behind that are doing very well in the vaccines, long ahead of schedule,” he told reporters.
Under the agreement, the US government with will pay Pfizer nearly $2 billion for a December delivery of 10 crore doses of a COVID-19 vaccine the pharmaceutical company if approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The US could buy another 500 million doses under the agreement.
The agreement is part of President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, under which multiple COVID-19 vaccines are being developed simultaneously.
Under the initiative, the 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.
Another covid-19 vaccine candidate, developed by Moderna and National Institutes of Health, is set to begin final-stage testing in a study of 30,000 people to see if it really is safe and effective.
Nearly 40 lakh Americans have been infected by the new coronavirus and at least 1.43 lakh have died from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins.
Many other countries are also scrambling to get a vaccine for COVID-19, which has killed more than 6.23 lakh people, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Britain announced Monday it had secured access to another 90 million experimental COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and others.
China, where the new coronavirus originated, also has two vaccine candidates in final trial. (With Agency Inputs)
Subscribe to newsletters
* Enter a valid email
* Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.
