The United States government has entered a 1.5 billion agreement with Moderna Inc, a drug manufacturing company, for 100 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine, currently in development, according to Al Jazeera.

Quoting Moderna and the White House, Al Jazeera reported that the agreement follows many other deals to acquire hundreds of millions of doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines from several companies as part of its Operation Warp Speed programme, which aims to deliver a vaccine in the country by the end of the year.

Moderna's price per dose for the vaccine is about $30.50 per person for a two-dose regimen while all the other deals price Coronavirus vaccines at between $20 to $42 for a two-dose course of treatment.

Moderna's vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, is one of the few that have already advanced to the final stage of testing and is on track to be completed in September, the company said this month.

Moderna's deal with the US only pays out in full if the drugmaker hits certain timing benchmarks for vaccine delivery.

Picture credit: MSN