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 While not proven to be effective against the coronavirus, vaccines
are seen by many world leaders as the only real way to restart their
stalled economies, and even to get an edge over global competitors.
After demands by President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of
Health agreed to provide up to $1.2 billion to accelerate
AstraZeneca's vaccine development and secure 300 million doses of
the vaccines for the United States.
"This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation
Warp Speed’s work toward a safe, effective, widely available vaccine
by 2021," U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said.
The vaccine - previously known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and now as
AZD1222, was developed by the University of Oxford and licenced to
British drugmaker AstraZeneca. Immunity to the new coronavirus is
uncertain and so the use of vaccines unclear.
The U.S. deal allows a late-stage - Phase III - clinical trial of
the vaccine with 30,000 people in the United States.
AstraZeneca, based in Cambridge, England, said it had concluded
agreements for at least 400 million doses of the vaccine and secured
manufacturing capacity for one billion doses, with first deliveries
due to begin in September.
VACCINE SCRAMBLE
With leaders across the world surveying some of the worst economic
destruction since at least World War Two, many are scrambling for a
vaccine.
The United Kingdom has already secured 100 million of the
AstraZeneca doses, with 30 million as soon as September, also after
pledging funding. Ministers have promised that Britain will get
first access to the vaccine.
AstraZeneca said it was in talks with governments around the world
to increase access and production - for example with the Serum
Institute of India - although it added that it was also speaking to
various organisations on the fair allocation and distribution of the
vaccine.
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"We would like to thank the US and UK governments for their substantial support
to accelerate the development and production of the vaccine," AstraZeneca Chief
Executive Officer Pascal Soriot said.
A Phase I/II clinical trial of AZD1222 began last month to assess safety,
immunogenicity and efficacy in over 1,000 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 years
across several trial centres in southern England. Data from the trial is
expected shortly.
Only a handful of the vaccines in development have advanced to human trials, an
indicator of safety and efficacy, and the stage at which most fail.
There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for COVID-19 being tested
by pharmaceutical giants across the world, with governments, drugmakers and
researchers working on around 100 programmes and experts predicting a safe and
effective means of preventing the disease could take 12 to 18 months to develop.
"AstraZeneca recognises that the vaccine may not work but is committed to
progressing the clinical program with speed and scaling up manufacturing at
risk," it said.
Other drugmakers including Pfizer Inc , Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi are also in
various stages of vaccine development.
U.S.-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals said on Wednesday its experimental vaccine
produced protective antibodies and immune system responses in mice and guinea
pigs.
And Moderna this week released positive data for its potential vaccine, which it
said produced protective antibodies in a small group of healthy volunteers.
(Reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu in Bengaluru; writing by Guy Faulconbridge;
Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Patrick Graham and Alexander Smith)
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