The Trump Administration awarded a $1.95 billion contract to Pfizer Wednesday to manufacturer 600 million doses of an expected vaccine currently in trials, with 100 million of those expected by December, The New York Times reports.
The manufacture of the vaccine, which is under development by AstraZeneca and the UK’s University of Oxford, would be dependent upon continuing positive testing and clinical trials.
Under the contract, the federal government would receive the first 100 million doses of the vaccine, with rights to purchase another half billion doses later. While the vaccines would cost approximately $20 each, they would be available to the American public for free.
This contract does not pay Pfizer for its own attempts to develop a vaccine, which have as yet proved unsuccessful. The Pfizer research involved using so-called “messenger RNA” to defeat the virus, while they are being contracted to manufacture the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, which uses a genetically-modified version of a form of a coronavirus to stimulate the body’s production of antibodies and T-cells.