Johnson & Johnson says it aims to have more than half a billion coronavirus vaccines ready early next year.

The pharmaceutical giant will have 600 million to 800 million vaccines available in early 2021, when it expects the US government to approve the drug it plans to start testing in humans this September, chief financial officer Joe Wolk said Tuesday.

ALSO READ: Osun withdraws case against facebook user, as court grants N1million bail

“The timeline still is pretty certain,” Wolk told Yahoo Finance in an interview. “We’re manufacturing at risk to ensure that should the clinical development and the trials be successful, we are in a position to kind of flip the switch and ready to go to create great access across the globe.”

ALSO READ: COVID-19: OPEC puts Nigeria’s oil output at 1.78 m/bd in March 2020

The company aims to ramp up production to 1 billion doses annually by the end of next year, Wolk said in the interview. J&J and the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority announced a $1 billion investment last month to help achieve that goal.

J&J plans to set up a new manufacturing facility in the US to supplement the company’s plant in the Netherlands that can produce up to 300 million doses. The stateside factory will be up and running later this year or early next year, Wolk told Yahoo.

NY Post

Vanguard