A billion dollars for 100 million dozes of a vaccine that's not create yet. The U.S. Government has already paid for a potential vaccine. This is yet another transaction of that kind. This time, the money was paid to Johnson & Johnson. Apparently, the government has been sponsoring all kinds of experimental vaccines. Basically, Johnson & Johnson is expected to ship 100 million dozes of this vaccine at the price of 10 dollar per doze.
It's interesting to note that similar orders were made in the UK, Japan and the EU. To be more specific, they ordered experimental vaccines from Sanofi (France) and GlaxoSmithKline (UK), spending well over 2 billion dollars on that.
This exactly how the USA sponsors the research before the vaccine is out and available. At the same time, they are first in the line to get it. At this point, the total number of COVID-19 victims is nearing 5 million people, which is around 1,5% of the U.S. population.
J&J already received 1 billion dollars and promised to ship the vaccine to the BARDA for potential use by the FDA. The other day, the BARDA approved the transaction to sponsor the creation of the facilities for producing over 1 billion dozes of experimental vaccines.
As for the U.S. Government, they payed $10 per each doze of the 100 million dozes ordered. Later on, the government will have to pay around 20 dollars per doze if they want to get more, especially since the price has already been approved by Pfizer and BioNTech. The government is reported to be willing to buy 200 million extra dozes from J&J once the vaccine is invented. At this point, the price is not specified.
This is the first vaccine-related contract for J&J. According to Reuters, they are having talks with the EU but no agreement has been reached so far. The vaccines is being tested on volunteers from the United Stats and Belgium. At this point, there are no approved vaccines against COVID-19, and 20 vaccines are under test. According to Airfinity (UK), the USA, the EU, the UK, and Japan collectively own around 1,3 billion dozes of the vaccine, with the potential to increase the quantity to 1.5 billion dozes.
