NEW YORK – President Joe Biden yesterday said the United States will have enough vaccine for its entire adult population by the end of May, as he announced a deal for pharma giant Merck to produce the shot developed by rival Johnson & Johnson.
“This is the type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War.
“We are now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May,” said the US leader, who previously targeted late July to amass sufficient doses to inoculate all Americans.
“That’s progress, important progress. But it is not enough to have the vaccine supply.”
After announcing the pharmaceutical accord, Biden stressed that a “wartime effort” still lay ahead to administer the vaccines once acquired.
Merck will use two of its facilities to “produce drug substance, formulate and fill vials of J&J’s vaccine”, according to a Health and Human Services Department (HHS) statement.
It said Biden’s administration will leverage the defence production act to provide an initial US$105 million (RM425 million) for Merck to convert and equip its facilities to safely manufacture the vaccine.
The J&J vaccine is the third to receive US regulatory approval for emergency use, but the first that requires a single shot as opposed to two jabs.
Biden said J&J’s own vaccine manufacturing facilities “will now begin to operate 24/7” – at the administration’s urging.
HHS said this will enable J&J to deliver close to 100 million doses to the US by end May, instead of June as previously pledged.
J&J in a statement said it is “pleased” to work with Merck, which will “enhance our production capacity so that we can supply beyond our current commitments”.
The J&J shot appears slightly less protective than Pfizer and Moderna’s regimes, which have an efficacy of around 95% against all forms of Covid-19. But all three have been shown to fully protect against death and hospitalisation.
White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients on Monday said the federal government aims to distribute 3.9 million doses of the new vaccine this week – “the entire J&J inventory”.
A major vaccine producer in its own right, Merck has begun work on coronavirus vaccines, but abandoned those efforts in January, saying the immune responses are “inferior” to successful Covid-19 vaccines.
The agreement between Merck and J&J follows on the heels of an accord between Pfizer-BioNTech and French pharma giant Sanofi, which plans to produce 125 million doses at a factory in Frankfurt, Germany, after Sanofi’s own vaccine candidate fell short. – AFP, March 3, 2021
