Johnson & Johnson, U.S. govt plan 1 bil. doses of coronavirus vaccine

Johnson & Johnson said on Monday that it and the U.S. government will invest $1 billion to create enough manufacturing capacity to make more than 1 billion doses of a vaccine it really is testing to stop the brand new coronavirus which has killed a lot more than 35,000 people around the world.

Within the arrangement, the U.S. government can pay $421 million to aid the company’s efforts to build new manufacturing capacity in the usa.

J&J said it had selected its lead vaccine prospect and would start human testing by September, with an eye on having it ready under a crisis use authorization in early 2021, far quicker compared to the typical 18 month period that it requires for vaccines to be tested, approved and manufactured.

J&J Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Paul Stoffels told Reuters the business had to start ramping up manufacturing capacity now, even before it includes a signal that its experimental vaccine candidate works. The company begins making the vaccine at risk, without knowing for sure that it works.

“That is the only choice for us to obtain it on time,” Stoffels said in a phone interview.

The company has a manufacturing plant in the Netherlands that can constitute to 300 million doses of vaccine, Stoffels said, adding that “absolutely will never be satisfactory for the world.”

He said J&J is starting to build a plant in the usa now so it could be prepared to manufacture vaccines by the finish of the year, when data from its clinical trials will show if the vaccine works.

Nearly half of the $1 billion will come from the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which is seeking to expand on J&J’s previous collaboration with the agency.

Stoffels said the business is also scouting for manufacturing plants in other parts of Europe and Asia that can handle making the sort of vaccine the business is working on.

So far, J&J has not given any doses of its vaccine to humans. But Stoffels said the coronavirus vaccine depends on a single technology used to make its Ebola vaccine, which has been trusted in people, and the business believes it'll prove safe.

Safety testing of vaccines is a lot more important than for treatments because they are given to healthy people to prevent infection. That could be 1 billion people or even more around the world. In lab studies, the vaccine applicant has produced strong neutralizing antibodies to the virus - the sort needed to make an effective vaccine.

J&J will continue testing the vaccine in animal studies come early july and plans to start human trials in September.

The brand new coronavirus, which started out in Wuhan, China, has infected persons in most countries around the world. AMERICA, with over 143,00 confirmed case of COVID-19 - the illness caused by the virus - gets the most cases globally.

Moderna Inc. this month commenced initial testing of it’s experimental coronavirus vaccine in healthy volunteers, rendering it the first front-runner in the race to build up a viable vaccine.