( Reuters) – The United States federal government will pay Johnson & Johnson over $1 billion (7605 million pounds) for 100 million dosages of its possible coronavirus vaccine, as it stocks up on vaccine and drugs in an effort to tame the pandemic.
The most recent agreement is priced at roughly $10 per vaccine dosage produced by J&J, or around $1450 per dose, consisting of a previous $456 million the U.S. federal government assured to J&J for vaccine development in March. That compares with the $1950 per dosage that the U.S. is spending for the vaccine being developed by Pfizer Inc and German biotech BioNTech SE.
J&J is studying both one and two-dose regimens of its vaccine. Pfizer and BioNTech’s candidate would require two dosages per person dealt with. The drugmaker stated on Wednesday it would deliver the vaccine to the Biomedical Advanced Research Study and Advancement Authority (BARDA) on a not-for-profit basis to be utilized after approval or emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The U.S. federal government may also buy an extra 200 million doses under a subsequent contract. J&J did not divulge that deal’s worth.
As the race for vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 heightens, the U.S. federal government has been signing offers to purchase them through its Operation Terminal velocity program. Other drugmakers who have actually signed deals include Sanofi SA and Regeneron Inc.
This is J&J’s first offer to provide its investigational vaccine to a country. Talks are underway with the European Union, but no deal has yet been reached.
J&J’s investigational vaccine is presently being checked on healthy volunteers in the United States and Belgium in an early-stage research study.
There are presently no approved vaccines for COVID-19 More than 20 remain in medical trials.
Shares of J&J were up around 1 percent in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
( This story remedies size of previous handle BARDA in paragraph 2)
Reporting by Michael Erman in Maplewood, New Jersey, Shariq Khan in Bengaluru and Josephine Mason; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Jonathan Oatis
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