Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson said Monday it has a promising COVID-19 vaccine candidate that will go into human trials by September and could be available for emergency use by early next year.
“We’ve got a candidate that has a high degree of probability of being successful against the COVID-19 virus,” Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky said on NBC’s “Today.”
He said the company, along with the federal government, is investing more than $1 billion to ramp up clinical trials and develop the shots. They expect to see data on its impact roll in during the last quarter of the year.
Mr. Gorsky said his company, whose stocks rose upon the news, got a head start because of its prior work on Ebola and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which appeared in east Asia in 2002.
There is no cure or vaccine for the new coronavirus, which was discovered in December in Wuhan, China.
The company’s announcement comes as President Trump pressures companies to fast-track potential drug therapies and vaccines for the coronavirus, which has killed over 2,500 people in the U.S. and upended the economic progress that Mr. Trump hoped to ride to reelection.
Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases scientist, warned Mr. Trump that vaccine development would take a year to a year and a half. Vaccines are given to healthy people — not those who are sick — so trials are needed to make sure doctors don’t do harm.
Johnson & Johnson’s push for a vaccine by early 2021 would put its timeline on the ambitious side of that range.
“This is a bit of a moonshot for J&J going forward, but it’s one we feel is very, very important for us to be doing at this period in time,” Mr. Gorsky told CNBC.
The fast timeline, he told the network, is the result of the technology platform they have, the amount of investment and efforts form the Food and Drug Administration to streamline rules they must follow.
Mr. Gorsky said the vaccine will be offered on a “not-for-profit basis” in the U.S. and around the globe.
Two other companies, Moderna and China-based CanSino Biological, have begun trials on rival vaccines.
Mr. Trump highlighted potential drug treatments in recent days because vaccines take so long to develop. He’s emphasized a combination of an anti-malarial drug and certain antibiotics.
While some say Mr. Trump is putting too much stock in the drugs, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo initiated a clinical trial in his state.
