The bottom: The federal government has increased its investments in developing, testing, and accelerating production capacity for Covid-19 vaccines and treatment. Earlier this month, it provided $ 450 million to manufacture a promising treatment and $ 1.6 billion to Novavax to run a late-stage trial for its vaccine candidate.
Previously, Moderna had received up to $ 483 million from BARDA, bringing the total prize to $ 955 million, nearly $ 1 billion. The study is conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, led by Anthony Fauci.
The politics: Phase three trials are the final step in determining how safe and effective a vaccine is, and the new investment comes when the Trump administration expects a high-profile launch of initial vaccines in just three months.
While there are still many unknowns about whether the promising vaccines being tested will actually work, Trump himself has been highly optimistic in his public comments. “We are very close to the vaccine, I think we are going to have very good results,” Trump said Tuesday.
The political stakes are huge. Trump has opted to find a vaccine to change the course of the virus. Only one in three Americans surveyed supported their administration’s response to the virus, a new low, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Sunday.
