Although none of the coronavirus vaccines under development has proven its efficacy yet in clinical trials, at least 5.7 billion doses have been pre-ordered around the world.
First shipments of a COVID-19 vaccine made by Western laboratories have mostly been snapped up by the United States.
Five vaccines — three Western and two Chinese — are in Phase 3 efficacy trials using thousands of people.
In a surprise announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Tuesday that a vaccine tagged “Sputnik V” — after the Soviet satellite — provided “sustainable immunity” against the novel coronavirus.
As research laboratories around the world race to develop a vaccine, manufacturers have received financing to allow them prepare to have millions of doses ready to administer in 2021 or even before the end of the year.
Oxford University,in collaboration with the Swedish-British pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca,expects to have results by September while the US biotech company Moderna, partnering with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), is targeting the end of the year, possibly November.
US: 700 million doses
President Donald Trump has launched “Operation Warp Speed” in a move to develop, manufacture and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine to all Americans latest January 2021.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested for vaccine developers including nearly $500 million to Johnson & Johnson at the end of March.
The United States has allocated funding to more companies than any other nation in the hope that one of them will come up with the vaccine to overcome the highly contagious virus.
So far, Washington has handed out at least a total of 9.4 billion dollars to seven vaccine developers and signed manufacturing contracts with five of them to supply 700 million doses.
The companies involved include Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Oxford/AztraZeneca, Novavax, Pfizer/BioNTech, Sanofi/GSK, Merck Sharp and Dohme.
Europe: 700 million doses
Two vaccine developers — Oxford/AztraZeneca and Sanofi/GSK — have signed or are in advanced stage of negotiations with the European Commission to provide a combined 700 million vaccine doses.
Britain, Japan, Brazil
Britain, due to Brexit, is negotiating a separate pre-order of 250 million doses from four developers.
Japan is counting on 490 million doses from three suppliers including 250 million from Novavax of the United States.
Japanese pharmaceutical giant Takeda bought the rights to a Novavax vaccine for Japan, which has financed the research. It would be produced locally.
Brazil chose a similar model, ordering 100 million doses from AstraZeneca, and partnering with China’s Sinovac to produce 120 millions of “CoronaVac,” which is already being tested to Brazilians.
China, Russia
Clinical tests of two Chinese vaccine candidates — Sinovac and Sinopharm — are well ongoing but only a few international partnerships have been announced, the one with Brazil and a possible one with Indonesia.
Russia stated that 20 nations have pre-ordered one billion doses of Sputnik V and that with foreign partners it could be capable of producing 500 million doses a year in five countries.
Developing countries
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), launched in 2017 by Norway, India, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, works to ensure that there is “equitable access” to future vaccines.
It has pre-ordered 300 million doses from AstraZeneca for dozens of developing countries in a partnership with The Vaccine Alliance (Gavi).
Billions of doses would be produced for Asia and elsewhere by the giant Serum Institute of India (SII), the biggest vaccine producer in the world.
Novavax and AstraZeneca have separately signed agreements with SII to produce a billion doses each for India and low- and middle-income countries on the condition, of course, that they show evidence of their efficacy in clinical trials.
AFP
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