Credit: REUTERS/MIKE BLAKEU.S. may buy another 200 mln doses
This is J&J's first supply deal with a country
BARDA has also helped fund J&J's manufacturing capacity
Adding details throughout
Aug 5 (Reuters) - The United States government will pay Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N over $1 billion for 100 million doses of its potential coronavirus vaccine, its latest such arrangement as the race to tame the pandemic intensifies, the drugmaker said on Wednesday.
It said it would deliver the vaccine to Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) on a not-for-profit basis to be used after approval or emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The U.S. government may also purchase an additional 200 million doses under a subsequent agreement, it said.
The latest deal comes after BARDA agreed to provide $1 billion for J&J to build manufacturing capacity to make more than 1 billion doses of its experimental vaccine.
This is J&J's first deal to supply its investigational vaccine to a country. Talks are underway with the European Union, but no deal has yet been agreed.
J&J's investigational vaccine is currently being tested on healthy volunteers in the United States and Belgium in an early stage study.
There are currently no approved vaccines for COVID-19, and more than 20 are in clinical trials.
FACTBOX-U.S. pours billions into securing access to coronavirus vaccine candidates
(Reporting by Shariq Khan in Bengaluru and Josephine Mason; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
((Shariq.Khan@thomsonreuters.com; Within U.S.+1 646 223 8780, outside U.S. +91 80 6182 2681; Twitter: @shariqrtrs;))
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