Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the United States has a good chance at developing a vaccine that would be available to the masses by the end of the year.
Azar, who appeared on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom on Wednesday, stated that it is “very credible” that the country will have a top-of-the-line vaccine ready for the public in the fall when he was asked by a host about a realistic timetable.
“It is very credible that we will have the high tens of millions of doses of FDA gold standard vaccine by the end of this year and many hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine by the beginning of next year,” he stated.
President Trump has long pined for a vaccine to get a grip on the pandemic and the economic turmoil associated with the shutdown of businesses across the country. In May, Trump and Azar announced “Operation Warp Speed,” created with the goal of producing and distributing 300 million coronavirus vaccines by January 2021.
During the interview, Azar cited “the most historic advances in the development of vaccines” over the last two weeks. He also noted that the country has invested in six different vaccines. “Four of them have already reported out positive phase I clinical trial results, and two of them are already in the advanced final phase 3 studies,” he said.
The U.S. government pledged $2.1 billion to pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur for the production of up to 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as well as tests and treatments. Pfizer and BioNTech also signed a $1.95 billion agreement with HHS and the Defense Department for 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it’s proven safe and effective. HHS and the DOD did the same with the $1.6 billion granted to Novavax and the $1.2 billion granted to AstraZeneca.
The total price tag of developing vaccines through Operation Warp Speed has climbed to about $8 billion of the total $13 billion of funding made available through the initiative for vaccine and treatment development.
