A first government clinical trial of a new Corona virus will be conducted today, Monday, while other reports said that US President Donald Trump is interested in a German company that is working to produce another vaccine and seeks to guarantee it exclusively to his country.
The agency said, quoting the official - who requested that his name not be released because the move was not officially announced - that the National Institutes of Health Institutes in the United States is funding the mentioned trial of the Corona virus vaccine, which will be conducted in Seattle.
The vaccine is being produced in a joint project between the National Institutes of Health and Moderna.
The Associated Press said that the experiment will be conducted on 45 young volunteers in good health, the first of whom is supposed to take a trial dose today.
The report stated that there is no possibility for the testers to contract the disease, because these doses do not contain the virus itself.
He added that the goal of the experiment at this stage is to ensure that the vaccine does not lead to any disturbing side effects, to pave the way for large-scale trials.
Meanwhile, there have been reports of disputes between the United States and Germany over a German pharmaceutical company which is also working on a vaccine for the Corona virus.
The American-German Conflict
Meanwhile, the German newspaper "Welt am Sonntag" said that US President Donald Trump offered money to attract German company "Korvac" to the United States, adding that the German government was making counter offers to persuade the company to stay in Germany.
Reuters news agency later quoted German government sources as saying on Sunday that the US administration is searching for a way to find the possible vaccine that Curvac is working on.
In the same context, the German Minister of the Interior was quoted as saying that a government committee will discuss what is being said about an attempt by the Trump administration to lure the German company in order to produce the vaccine exclusively for the benefit of the United States.
A spokeswoman for the German Health Ministry said, "The German government is very keen to ensure the production of vaccines and anti-viral materials for the new Corona virus also in Germany and Europe."
"In this regard, the government is in extensive contact with Curvac," she added.
Commenting on the news, the US ambassador to Germany Richard Grinnell said on Twitter that "the (newspaper) report is wrong."