Coronavirus: J&J to make 1b doses of vaccine under US govt deal

NEW YORK • The United States government has cut deals with Johnson & Johnson and Moderna and said it is in talks with at least two other companies to expand manufacturing capacity within the country for vaccines to prevent the new coronavirus, even before safe and effective ones become available.

There are as yet no approved treatments or vaccines specifically for Covid-19, the respiratory disease that has killed more than 38,000 people and infected over 800,000 globally in just a few months.

No vaccine is expected to be ready for use until at least next year, as they must still be widely tested in humans before being administered to hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people to prevent infection.

On Monday, J&J announced a US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion) deal with the US government to create enough manufacturing capacity to make more than 1 billion doses of a vaccine. It has chosen a candidate but will not begin human testing until September.

Moderna, which has begun very early tests of its vaccine candidate in people, has signed a deal with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda), which is under the US Department of Health and Human Services.

The arrangements are part of the federal government's effort to encourage drugmakers to produce massive amounts of Covid-19 vaccines even before any are proven to work.

Barda ultimately plans to support five or six experimental vaccine candidates, with the hopes of having two or three successful vaccines, the authority's director Rick Bright said in an interview.

Experts have estimated that it could be 12 to 18 months before a safe and effective vaccine wins regulatory approval.

"Government and industry are working in unprecedented ways," Mr Bright said. The hope is to work "as quickly as possible and manufacture enough of it for us and the rest of the world in a very short timeframe".

There are dozens of coronavirus vaccines in development, according to the World Health Organisation. But it is still not clear if people develop lasting immunity to this virus, or what it will take for a vaccine to be protective.

J&J said it will begin human testing in September, with an eye towards having a vaccine ready under an emergency use authorisation early next year.

J&J chief scientific officer Paul Stoffels told Reuters the company had to start ramping up manufacturing capacity now, even before it has a signal that its experimental vaccine candidate works.

J&J hopes to have data proving its vaccine works by the end of the year. The company has a manufacturing plant in the Netherlands that can make up to 300 million doses of vaccine, Dr Stoffels said, but that "absolutely will not be sufficient for the world".

Dr Stoffels said J&J's vaccine will be based on the same technology used to make its Ebola vaccine, which has been widely used in people. The company believes it will prove safe.

"There're a lot of risks involved in making a new vaccine," Mr Bright said. "Wherever possible, we need to understand and mitigate those risks."

REUTERS