US government agrees to buy 100 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 trial vaccine for up to $1.5 billion

• The US government on Tuesday announced it was buying 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
• The agreement calls for the pharmaceutical company Moderna to manufacture the vaccine while clinical trials are still underway.
• The deal is worth up to $1.5 billion. It also permits the US to obtain another 400 million doses.
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The US government has agreed to pay up to $1.5 billion to obtain 100 million doses of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday.

Under the deal, the pharmaceutical company Moderna will manufacture the doses as it conducts late-stage clinical trials, which are expected to produce results as early as October.

“Manufacturing in parallel with clinical trials expedites the traditional vaccine development timeline,” the HHS said in a press release.

The vaccine has been codeveloped by Moderna and the US government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"We appreciate the confidence of the US government in our mRNA vaccine platform and the continued support," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a press release.

The deal is one of several that have been announced with vaccine manufacturers. As CNBC reported, the US has offered up to $2.1 billion for a vaccine being developed by Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline; another $1.95 billion to Pfizer and BioNTech; and another $1 billion to Johnson & Johnson.

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