Five companies have now been picked by the Trump administration as the most likely candidates to produce a coronavirus vaccine, The New York Times reports.This comes as part of Operation Warp Speed (OWS), the administration’s national program to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.Among its other objectives, Operation Warp Speed aims to have substantial quantities of a safe and effective vaccine available for Americans by January 2021.The five companies selected are as follows:Moderna’s (MRNA) mRNA1273 which is currently undergoing Phase 2 trials;A joint collaboration between AstraZeneca (AZN) and Oxford University on AZD1222 which is now in clinical trials at multiple UK sites;Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) which plans to start a Phase 1 clinical trial in September with an ultimate goal of supplying more than one billion doses of its coronavirus vaccine globally;Merck (MRK) which is trying to develop a vaccine using similar technology to its successful Ebola vaccine through a partnership with non-profit research organization IAVI, and;Pfizer (PFE) is working with German drugmaker BioNTech (BNTX) on clinical trials of BNT162, with plans to have a vaccine ready by the end of October, and produce “hundreds of millions” of doses in 2021.GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi did not make the cut.On May 15 Operation Warp Speed revealed plans to select the most promising countermeasure candidates and provide coordinated government support to support their development.Large-scale randomized trials for the demonstration of safety and efficacy will proceed for three to five of the candidates, with as many as 150,000 people vaccinated if all five vaccine candidates reach the Phase 3 stage.Indeed, Congress has directed almost $10 billion to this effort through supplemental funding, including the CARES Act, with $3 billion directed for NIH research.“Vaccines are coming along really well,” President Trump told the Twittersphere on Tuesday. “
