The US government has signed a deal with Moderna worth $1.525 billion. The biotech company will secure 100 million doses of the coronavirus vaccines that they are developing for the country.
With this, the US government has supply agreements from five different companies in advance. These vaccines are the top contenders that have maximum chances of getting approval. The deal with Moderna is the second one till now.
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Moderna gets aid from the US
The US government had earlier promised to spend $995 million for the company to develop a technology that would make the vaccine production easier. Moderna’s vaccine uses a messenger RNA from coronavirus to induce people’s immune response levels. This RNA-based vaccine hasn’t been developed for any diseases until now.
With these two agreements with Moderna, the government makes a commitment to spending $2.48 billion for the coronavirus vaccine. There is also an unspecified sum of money that has been given as an incentive for delivering the vaccine within time. However, the company didn’t give details of the timelines.
The company only revealed that their agreement provided an option for buying 400 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. As of now, the Moderna vaccine is in its final stage for human trials. It is supposed to be ready by the early months of 2021.
The government commits to secure a minimum of 300 million doses of the vaccine by January 2021. They have made a program to track this and it is named Operation Warp Speed. As of now, the country has entered agreements of around 700 million doses with top contenders.
The US government secured 800 million coronavirus vaccines in advance
The US has secured the AstraZeneca and Oxford University vaccine by 300 million doses for a deal of $1.2 billion. They have also signed a deal with Novavax and secured 100 million from them. However, the biggest deal as of now is with GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi. The government is going to pay them $1.2 billion for 100 million vaccine doses.
The government is also into a deal with Johnson & Johnson for supplying 100 million vaccines. Again, there is a deal with BioNtech and Pfizer worth $1.95 billion for 100 million doses. In totality, the government has secured 800 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine for a population of 330 million.
The most credible institutions are developing coronavirus vaccines. But not all of them can supposedly work. The diversification assures that the country will have supplies from whichever company provides the best solution in the least amount of time.
