The US has signed a deal with drug manufacturer Moderna Inc. to acquire 100 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine for around USD1.5 billion, the company and White House said on Tuesday.
The US in recent weeks has struck deals to acquire hundreds of millions of doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines from several companies as part of its Operation Warp Speed programme, which aims to deliver a vaccine in the country by the end of the year. Moderna’s price per dose comes to around USD30.50 per person for a two-dose regimen.
With the exception of its deal with AstraZeneca, which offered a lower price per drug in exchange for upfront research and development costs, all the deals price COVID-19 vaccines between USD20 to USD42 for a two-dose course of treatment.
Moderna’s vaccine candidate – mRNA-1273 – is one of the few that have already advanced to the final stage of testing and is on track to be completed in September, the company said this month. Moderna’s deal with the U.S. only pays out in full if it hits certain unspecified timing benchmarks for vaccine delivery.
The US has advanced purchase agreements with Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca Plc, Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, and Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc for their respective vaccine candidates. The agreements would lock in more than 500 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine for the US, assuming the companies involved receive regulatory approval. Some deals also give the US an option to purchase additional doses.
The US government previously gave Moderna around USD 1 billion to fund its research efforts, bringing total US funding to about USD2.5 billion.