Japan, AstraZeneca to agree on 100 mil. Covid-19 vaccine dose supply
Two vaccine trials – one by a Chinese team and the other out of Oxford in Britain – have produced an immune response in trial patients. Photo: Xinhua. Sketched by the Pan Pacific Agency.
TOKYO, Aug 7, 2020, Kyodo. The Japanese government is expected to soon reach a deal with British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc to receive a supply of over 100 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine being developed with the University of Oxford, a source close to the matter said Friday, Kyodo News reported.
The drugmaker has announced that it will start supplying its COVID-19 vaccine overseas in September, and is expected to begin clinical trials in Japan later this month to confirm its efficacy and safety.
Japan has already agreed to receive a supply of 120 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine for 60 million people by the end of June next year from U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech SE., if they succeed in developing it.
AstraZeneca, which has been conducting overseas a final-stage clinical trial of its experimental AZD1222 vaccine, has not yet decided whether to inoculate a person once or twice if the vaccine is put into practical use.
The British company is in talks with JCR Pharmaceuticals Co. in Hyogo Prefecture to produce vaccine solutions, and with Tokyo-based Daiichi Sankyo Co. for packing and storing vaccines.
The drugmaker’s COVID-19 vaccine is among the world’s most advanced vaccine candidates. The company has said the vaccine showed robust immune responses in all participants in early-stage trials.
Share it
| 
| 
| 
| 
|