The vaccine race continues. The government of Donald Trump announced on Wednesday August 5 a new investment of $ 1 billion in the Covid-19 vaccine project of the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. The group had already received at the end of March 456 million dollars. The new billion will fund a demonstration project of large-scale manufacturing of its experimental vaccine, with the promised delivery of 100 million doses, if the vaccine proves effective. 

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. This latest alliance, in negotiations with other countries, notably provides for 400 million doses for the European Union. 

But the race for the vaccine requires launching production in parallel with clinical trials and potentially at a loss, even before knowing whether the vaccine is effective. In the United States, 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 Anthony Fauci, who heads the institute of infectious diseases managing the trial, on Wednesday. , during an exchange organized by Harvard.

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The doctor hopes to recruit 30,000 participants within three months, half of whom will receive a placebo. We will then have to wait to see if the placebo group is naturally more infected with Covid-19 than the vaccinated group. "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," Dr Fauci assured.

"I am cautiously optimistic about our success," he added, due to the immune response generated by the vaccine in trials on a small number of volunteers since March. "Historically, if we develop a vaccine with a moderate to high degree of effectiveness, and if we combine it with prudent public health measures, we should put [this crisis] behind us," he adds. he.

Refinement deemed unnecessary, according to Dr Fauci

Regarding the course of the epidemic, the immunologist said on Wednesday that he did not believe that a "re-containment" would be necessary in the United States. "It is neither necessary to completely confine, nor on the contrary to release all the brakes. There is a happy medium where we can open [the economy and social relations] with caution," he said. in an interview with Reuters.

The US government has also spent billions on building production sites, on companies making syringes and vials that will be needed to distribute the future vaccine, not to mention support for the development of treatments.

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The United States thus bought almost all of the production of the antiviral drug remdesivir until September, the first to have shown a relative benefit for Covid-19 patients.

With AFP and Reuters

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