The United States Pledges $1.2 Billion to Secure Doses of Potential AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine

As the race for developing treatment and vaccines for the Covid-19 amongst pharmaceuticals, England-based AstraZeneca has developed a potential vaccine for the Covid-19. With the recent development of the potential Covid-19 vaccine and struggle amongst world powers to get their hands on effective treatment for the coronavirus, the United States has pledged $1.2 billion worth of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. That is about one-third of the first one billion doses of the vaccine.

Although the vaccine is yet to be proven as an effective treatment and prevention of the coronavirus vaccine, world leaders are eager to get their hands on any treatment that could work, to get their economies back on track.

The move of securing the vaccines was strongly backed by President Trump and supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services. To show support for the British drugmaker AstraZeneca, President Trump and the Department of Health and Human Services pledged 300 million as a way of accelerating the vaccine development and secure the doses for the US.

“This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation Warp Speed’s work toward a safe effective, widely available vaccine by 2021,” said Alex Azar, US Health Secretary.

The vaccine was developed by the University of Oxford and licensed to AstraZeneca. I t was formerly known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 but now known as AZD1222. The vaccine’s immunity to the new coronavirus remains uncertain, notwithstanding, it holds great potentials.

The US $1.2 billion vaccine pledge secures a spot for the US to participate in the Phase III clinical trial of the vaccine, testing it on 30,000 people in the United States.

The drugmaker is set to make its first set of deliveries by September. It has so far concluded agreements for more than 400 million doses of the vaccine, securing manufacturing capacity for one billion doses. AstraZeneca has assured British lawmakers that the first 100 million vaccine doses will be delivered to people in Britain, with 30 million as early as September.

According to a statement by the US Department of Health and Human Services the United States will begin receiving deliveries of the vaccines by October.

In a briefing with reporters at the White House, when asked about the AstraZeneca vaccines, President Trump said: “We have a lot of things happening on the vaccine front or the therapeutic front.” Adding that, Americans are going to have “a lot of big announcements over the next week or two.”