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Law360 (August 5, 2020, 12:32 PM EDT ) Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical unit Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies struck a $1 billion deal with the federal government to produce 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, the personal care products giant said Wednesday.
Janssen will manufacture 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine per a deal with the government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the U.S. Department of Defense, which are committing $1 billion toward the effort. The vaccine will be provided to patients globally for emergency use on a nonprofit basis, the announcement said.
"Johnson & Johnson's global team of experts has worked tirelessly alongside BARDA and scientific partners to pursue a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that can help to stop the spread of COVID-19," stated Paul Stoffels, J&J's vice chairman of the executive committee and chief scientific officer.
"We greatly appreciate the U.S. government's confidence in, and support for, our [research and development] platform and efforts and the scalability of our vaccine technology. We are scaling up production in the U.S. and worldwide to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for emergency use," Stoffels stated.
Clinical trials of the vaccine are currently underway in the U.S. and Belgium, according to the announcement. A subsequent agreement paves the way for the government to purchase 200 million doses under a successive agreement, J&J said.
The government also has coronavirus vaccine agreements in place with Sanofi SA, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Novavax Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc., among others.
J&J's announcement comes as the World Health Organization reported 18.4 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 696,147 deaths as of Wednesday.
In the U.S., state governors who were slowly lifting business and social gathering restrictions placed in March reinstated them to some degree in recent weeks in response to regional surges in places like Florida and Arizona.
--Editing by Alyssa Miller.
Update: This story has been updated with more details about the deal.
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