The U.S. government has ordered 300 million doses of a potential COVID-19 virus being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University and hopes first doses can be made available by October, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Thursday according to Reuters.
“This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation Warp Speed’s work toward a safe, effective, widely available vaccine by 2021,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement.
After demands by President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Health agreed to provide up to $1.2 billion to accelerate AstraZeneca’s vaccine development and secure doses of the vaccines for the United States.
The vaccine – previously known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and now as AZD1222, was developed by the University of Oxford and licenced to British drugmaker AstraZeneca. Immunity to the new coronavirus is uncertain and so the use of vaccines unclear.
The United Kingdom has already secured 100 million of the AstraZeneca doses, with 30 million as soon as September, also after pledging funding. Ministers have promised that Britain will get first access to the vaccine.
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