FRIDAY, July 31, 2020 (HealthDay News) — The United States is buying up another potential COVID-19 vaccine, the Associated Press reported Friday.
Drug makers GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur will supply 100 million doses of its experimental vaccine to the United States in hopes the vaccine will prevent COVID-19. The United States will pay $2.1 billion “for development including clinical trials, manufacturing, scale-up, and delivery of its vaccine,” the companies said in a statement. Most of the money will go to Sanofi, the AP said. The United States also has an option to buy 500 million more doses as part of its Operation Warp Speed program.
“The portfolio of vaccines being assembled for Operation Warp Speed increases the odds that we will have at least one safe, effective vaccine as soon as the end of this year,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. “Today’s investment supports the Sanofi and GSK adjuvanted product all the way through clinical trials and manufacturing, with the potential to bring hundreds of millions of safe and effective doses to the American people.”
The British government is buying 60 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the AP reported. “The global need for a vaccine to help prevent COVID-19 is massive, and no single vaccine or company will be able to meet the global demand alone,” Thomas Triomphe, executive vice president of Sanofi Pasteur, told the AP.
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