Japan signs agreement to get 120 million doses of vaccine
Japan has signed an agreement to guarantee 120 million possible doses of the COVID-19 vaccine with German pharmaceutical group BiGechech, which is developing the drug with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
The financial details were not disclosed to BioNTech saying the terms depend on the delivery time and the amount of production.
However, an agreement between the lab and the US recently announced the price for a 100 million potential dose of the vaccine worth nearly US $ 2 billion (RM8.5 billion).
The first shipment in Japan is planned by mid-2021, according to the Mainz-based company.
Laboratories around the world are now racing to find a vaccine to treat COVID-19 which has now claimed 667,000 lives.
More than 200 types of vaccines are being produced with two dozen of them being in the clinical stage with human volunteers.
BioNTech and Pfizer decided to continue their testing on a vaccine candidate known as BNT162b2.
Last Monday, the company announced it had conducted a test involving 30,000 healthy volunteers.
Subject to results and agreement, Pfizer and BioNTech hope to produce up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and potentially more than 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.
Japan has so far managed to overcome the epidemic by recording around 32,500 infections and more than 1,000 deaths since the first case was detected in January.
However, the number of cases has increased since the government eased sanctions two months ago.
The governor of Tokyo warned that the Japanese capital may face an emergency if the number of infections continues to rise.