Japan Secures 120 Million Doses of Covid-19 Vaccine

BERLIN, KOMPAS.com – Japan recently agreed to a deal that would help the East Asian country secure 120 million doses of a potential Covid-19 vaccine.

The vaccine is being developed by Germany’s BioNTech which is developing the drug with US’ Pfizer. The German pharmaceutical group confirmed the news on Friday. 

But an agreement announced recently between the labs and the United States put the price of 100 million doses of the potential vaccine at almost $2 billion.

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First deliveries to Japan are planned for the first half of 2021, added the Mainz-based company.

Laboratories around the world are racing to find a vaccine to curb Covid-19, which has claimed more than 667,000 lives and upended the livelihoods of millions.

More than 200 candidate vaccines are currently being developed with roughly two dozen at the stage of clinical trials with human volunteers.

BioNTech and Pfizer have decided to advance their trials on the most promising of their vaccine candidates, known as BNT162b2.

On Monday, the companies announced that they have begun a mass trial involving 30,000 healthy volunteers.

Read also: Covid-19 Vaccine Trials in US Underway in Biggest Test to Date