Thanks to a newly announced second agreement with the U.S. government, the Pfizer team is even more confident about hitting some impressive vaccination numbers by the middle of next year.
On Wednesday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that the U.S. government had agreed to purchase an additional 100 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. This deal will bring the total number of doses currently set for delivery to the U.S. to 200 million. For the newly announced second wave of 100 million doses, the government will pay $1.95 billion.
"Securing more doses from Pfizer and BioNTech for delivery in the second quarter of 2021 further expands our supply of doses across the Operation Warp Speed portfolio," U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a press release. "This new federal purchase can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021."
At least 70 million of the additional doses are set to be delivered by June 30, 2021. The remaining 30 million are due no later than July 31.
The vaccine in question was previously given an Emergency Use Authorization distinction from the FDA. As we draw closer to a New Year, cautious optimism has surrounded the rollout of vaccines across the world. And here in the States, we'll also be closing out 2020 with consistently troubling COVID-19 case numbers.
In fact, per the CDC, 2020 will go down as the deadliest year in U.S. history.
