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Coping with COVID: Operation Warp Speed provides funding for three national vaccine candidates

The U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed is providing funding to Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax for coronavirus vaccine trials which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has deemed the most promising.

Ongoing vaccine trials across the U.S. have led to the creation of Operation Warp Speed, a partnership among components of several U.S. government departments and agencies that is funding coronavirus vaccine trials.

These partnership entities include the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the Department of Defense (DoD).

HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Defense Secretary Mark Esper currently oversee Operation Warp Speed.

Candidates from three companies are moving along quickly, reports CNN: Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax.

Operation Warp Speed has stepped in to help speed up the process of finding a working coronavirus vaccine, providing funding the three companies and five others, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has deemed the most promising.

The goal of Operation Warp Speed is to have 300 million doses of a vaccine that is safe and effective by January 2021.

Funding is being channeled through the operation from Congress, which has directed almost $10 billion to this effort through supplemental funding, including the CARES Act. The almost $10 billion specifically directed includes more than $6.5 billion designated for countermeasure development through Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and $3 billion for National Institutes of Health (NIH) research.