The Trump administration is going to pump another $472 million into expanding Moderna’s clinical trial to test the safety and efficacy of its coronavirus vaccine candidate.
What happened: Moderna announced Sunday that the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA, is pouring the additional dollars the day before the phase three trial of the vaccine candidate is slated to start.
The funding will help the biotechnology company expand the trial to 30,000 people in the U.S., according to Moderna, and comes on the heels of months of discussions with FDA and the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, an interagency effort to accelerate the timeline for a vaccine.
The background: The federal government has been increasing its investments in developing, testing and speeding production capacity for Covid-19 treatment and vaccines. 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 award to $955 million — almost $1 billion. The study is being done in collaboration with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is directed 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 as the Trump administration hopes for a high-profile rollout of initial vaccines in as soon as three months.
Even though there are still many unknowns about whether promising vaccines being tested will actually work, Trump himself has been very optimistic in his public comments. “We’re very close to the vaccine — I think we’re going to have some very good results,” Trump said Tuesday.
The political stakes are huge. Trump has banked on finding a vaccine to turn the tide on the virus. Only one in three Americans surveyed supported his administration’s response to the virus — a new low, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Sunday.
Source: politico.com
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