Pfizer gets $1.95 billion to produce coronavirus vaccine by year’s end

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a nearly $2 billion contract with Pfizer and a smaller German biotechnology company for as many as 600 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine, one of the largest investments yet in the global race to lock up vaccines even before they are ready.

The contract is part of what the White House calls the “Warp Speed” project, an effort to drastically shorten the time it would take to manufacture and distribute a working vaccine. So far the United States has put money into more than a half-dozen efforts, hoping to build a manufacturing capability for an eventual breakthrough.

Europe has a parallel effort underway. Germany recently took a 23 percent stake in a German firm, CureVac, that President Donald Trump once tried to lure to American shores, in hopes its vaccine, if successful, would be distributed in the United States first. A European-led fundraising effort in May brought $8 billion in pledges from the world’s governments, philanthropists and leaders for coronavirus vaccine research, even with the United States sitting out the conference.

China, in the meantime, has militarized the effort: Researchers associated with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences have developed one of China’s leading candidates, and another Chinese firm, Sinopharm Group, announced in June that it was beginning Phase 3 trials in the United Arab Emirates.