The US government has agreed to allocate $ 1.95 billion for 100 million doses of a vaccine against "Covid-19" that is being developed by the alliance of the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German "Biontech", according to the European laboratory, yesterday, while Beijing accused Washington of " The slander ”, following accusations about piracy research on« Covid-19 ».

Biontech said in a statement, the United States has the option to purchase "500 million additional doses," adding that "US citizens will receive the vaccine free of charge in line with the commitment of the United States government to provide Covid-19 vaccines for free."

German Biontech and the American Pfizer Laboratory have been working for several months to develop a vaccine project that will enter a critical phase of large-scale clinical trials after encouraging initial results.

Washington will receive the first doses as soon as Pfizer "successfully manufactures (the vaccine) and obtains approval" from the US health authorities.

The two laboratories aim to manufacture 100 million doses of vaccine before the end of 2020, with "the possibility of manufacturing more than 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021".

A spokeswoman for Biontech told France Press yesterday that two doses of the vaccine are needed, provided that the person receives a second booster dose seven days after the first injection.

The large-scale clinical trial phase of the experimental vaccine, which will be conducted in Brazil and Argentina, is currently due to commence.

"We are also in advanced discussions with many other governments, and we hope to announce additional delivery agreements soon," Piontech's head Ugur Shaheen said in a statement.

The British government announced yesterday the prior agreement to purchase 30 million doses from the German-American Alliance.

A study published by the American Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the day before yesterday, showed that the number of people infected with coronavirus emerging in the United States during the spring was in fact between two to 13 times the number officially recorded for infections, in figures that confirm The virus is transmitted by people who may not know they are infected.

This government health authority said that between March and June it had conducted laboratory tests on samples in blood banks in 10 regions of the United States for antibodies to Covid-19 disease, in order to find out if the owners of this blood had contracted the virus even if they did not show symptoms of the disease .

The commission indicated that the results of these tests showed that between 1 and 5.8% of the population of these areas were infected with the virus during that period, with the exception of New York, where the rate of infection with the virus on May 6 reached 23.2% of the population, or a quarter of the city's population.

Compared to the official number of injuries on those dates, the actual number of injured ranged between twice that in Utah, 10 times in southern Florida at the end of April and 13 times in rural Missouri.

In New York City, which was the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States in the spring, the actual number of people affected was ten times the official figure. These serological studies are conducted in many countries, and they allow researchers and their health authorities to know the extent of the virus outbreak in the population independently of laboratory tests carried out on swabs from the nose or throat to reveal whether a person is infected with the virus or not at the time of the examination.

The most prominent conclusion from this study is that hundreds of thousands of Americans were afflicted with "Covid-19" without knowing this, and they helped transfer the infection to others.

This comes at a time when US President Donald Trump expressed his willingness, yesterday, to work with China or any other countries to produce a vaccine for the Corona virus for use in the United States despite the increasing tensions between Beijing and Washington.

In response to a question whether the US administration is ready to cooperate with China in producing a vaccine for Americans whether or not China is the first country to develop the vaccine, Trump said, "We are ready to work with any party that will achieve a good result for us."

On the other hand, Beijing accused the United States yesterday of "slander" after it accused two Chinese people of seeking to steal research about a vaccine against the emerging corona virus and piracy of hundreds of companies.

"The Chinese government has been one of the strongest advocates of information security, and has always been opposed and moved to stop attacks and information crime in all its forms," ​​said State Department spokesman Wang Wenbin. "The United States should immediately stop its slanders against China on information security issues," he added.

• A study says that the actual number of people infected with "corona" in America is between two and 13 times greater.

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