The United States is doing its utmost to find a cure for the spread of the coronavirus. Donald Trump's government on Wednesday announced a new investment of $ 1 billion in the drug company Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine project. In total, American investments now amount to more than nine billion dollars.
Hundreds of millions of doses
Johnson & Johnson, via its subsidiary Janssen, had already received $ 456 million at the end of March. The new funds will finance a demonstration project for the large-scale manufacturing of its experimental vaccine, with the promised delivery of 100 million doses. However, the treatment will have to prove its effectiveness. In this case, the parties provide for a possible amendment of 200 million additional doses. Provided the vaccines are licensed, 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.
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. He hopes to recruit 30,000 participants within three months, half of whom will receive a placebo. "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," predicted Dr Fauci.
Hands down on remdesivir
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.
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