AFP, published on Wednesday 05 August 2020 at 20:43
Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday announced a new investment of $ 1 billion in the drug company Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine project, pushing total investments to more than $ 9 billion.
Johnson & Johnson, via its subsidiary Janssen, had already received $ 456 million at the end of March. The new billion will fund a demonstration project of large-scale manufacturing of its experimental vaccine, with the promised delivery of 100 million doses, if the vaccine proves effective. The parties provide for a possible amendment of 200 million additional doses.
The check raises U.S. public investment to at least $ 9.4 billion in vaccine projects, including supply contracts signed with five companies to deliver at least 700 million doses, according to a tally of AFP.
Provided the vaccines are approved, the United States could theoretically get 100 million doses from four groups (Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, Pfizer / BioNTech, Sanofi / GSK) and 300 million doses from Oxford / AstraZeneca, this last alliance having also signed or being in negotiations with other countries, in particular 400 million doses for the European Union.
The race for vaccines requires launching production in parallel with clinical trials and potentially at a loss, before even knowing whether the vaccine is effective.
The most advanced project in the United States is that of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), associated with the biotech Moderna. The last phase of clinical trials was launched at the end of July, a record time “which would have been unthinkable a decade ago,” said Wednesday Anthony Fauci, who heads the institute of infectious diseases managing the trial, during a exchange organized by Harvard.
He hopes to recruit 30,000 participants within three months, half of whom will receive a placebo. We will then have to wait to see if the placebo group is naturally more infected with the coronavirus than the vaccinated group.
“My estimate, which is only an estimate, is that by the end of the year or early 2021, we will know if we have a safe and effective vaccine,” Dr Fauci said.
“I am cautiously optimistic about our success,” he added, due to the immune response generated by the vaccine in trials on a small number of volunteers since March.
The US government has also spent billions on building production sites, on companies making syringes and vials that will be needed to distribute future vaccine (s), not to mention support for the development of treatments.
The United States thus bought almost all of the production of the antiviral drug remdesivir until September, the first to have demonstrated a relative benefit for Covid-19 patients.
–
