WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's announcement in May of plans to develop a COVID-19 vaccine by year's end is near realization -- despite a setback among one of the six candidates that the US supported.
Trump called the vaccine project Operation Warp Speed, putting at its head a US army general and a former executive of pharmaceutical giant GSK. The operation relied on six projects, two each for three kinds of vaccine technology so as to spread out the risk of one or more failing.Meanwhile Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, working with the University of Oxford, focused on "viral vectors." At first, the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford was out in front, with its CEO announcing in June that the team would know if it was effective by September.
The rest of the world is also banking on the six Warp Speed vaccines, among dozens of other candidates. US government money allowed for the financing of clinical trials and the retooling or construction of facilities to churn out vaccines.
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