U.S. health officials and drugmakers are expecting to start producing potential coronavirus vaccine doses by the end of the summer, a senior administration official said Monday. The U.S. is aiming to deliver 300 million doses of a vaccine for Covid-19 by early 2021. The manufacturing process is already underway even though they aren’t sure which vaccine, if any, will work.
U.S. health officials and researchers have been accelerating the development of vaccine candidates by investing in multiple stages of research, even though doing so could backfire if the vaccine ends up not being effective or safe. Health officials have previously said they are ramping up the manufacturing process to ensure they can immediately get a vaccine to market once they identify one that works.
President Donald Trump has praised the “tremendous progress” of vaccine development, calling the project “Operation Warp Speed” as coronavirus cases across the U.S. continue to surge.
