US signs $1.5 bn deal with Moderna for 100 mn doses of COVID-19 vaccine

The US has signed an agreement with Moderna to acquire 100 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine for around $1.5 billion, informed the company and White House.

Moderna’s price per dose comes to around $30.50 per person for a two-dose regimen.

With the exception of its deal with AstraZeneca, which offered a lower price per drug in exchange for upfront research and development costs, all the deals price COVID-19 vaccines between $20 to $42 for a two-dose course of treatment.

Moderna’s vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, is one of the few that have already advanced to the final stage of testing and is on track to be completed in September, the company said this month.

Moderna’s deal with the US only pays out in full if the company hits certain unspecific timing benchmarks for vaccine delivery.

The US government previously gave Moderna around $1 billion to fund its research efforts, bringing total US funding to around $2.5 billion.

The US in recent weeks has made deals to acquire hundreds of millions of doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines from several companies including Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca Plc, Pfizer and BioNTech, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline as part of its Operation Warp Speed program, which aims to deliver a vaccine in the country by the end of the year.

The agreements would lock in more than 500 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine for the US, assuming that the companies involved receive regulatory approval. Some deals also give the US an option to purchase additional doses.

Other countries, including Japan, the UK and Canada, have forged similar deals with pharma companies.