Image Source: BioWorld

Agencies:

Coronavirus vaccine Tracker, August 15: The United Kingdom has entered into advance Coronavirus vaccine deals with two more developers, securing a supply of another 90 million doses, should these vaccines become a reality. Before this, the UK had agreements with four other developers, for a combined supply of 250 million doses.

Friday�s deals were for 30 million doses of vaccine candidate being developed by Janassen, the pharmaceutical company of Johnson & Johnson and 60 million doses of that being developed by the US biotech company Novavax. Its earlier agreements were for vaccines being developed by AstraZenca and Oxford University (100 million doses), Pfizer and BioNtech (30 million), GlaxoSmitKline and Sanofi (60 million) and French biotech company Valneva (60 million).

If all these vaccine candidates become successful, the UK would have a stockpile of 340 million doses of Coronavirus vaccines, more than five for each of its citizens. But vaccine development is an extremely uncertain process and traditionally a very small percentage of vaccine candidates that started out have become a reality. Countries are therefore diversifying their stakes across developers and across different types of vaccines that are under development. The six companies that the UK government has entered into agreements which are using four different methods to produce the vaccine.