While some of the leading players in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine are racing toward the finish line, a range of smaller challengers is still hoping to carve out a market niche in the coming months. One of those, New York’s Covaxx, is rolling out its first swath of supply deals—and touting its shot’s logistics advantage.
Covaxx has inked a trio of deals with three South American nations to provide up to 140 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine at a price tag of $2.8 billion as the drugmaker prepares to enter phase 2/3 testing later this year.
Brazil, Ecuador and Peru have all signed on to receive Covaxx’s shot, dubbed UB-612, pending regulatory approval. Covaxx is ramping up production to produce 100 million doses in the first half of 2021 and then make a massive leap to churn out 1 billion doses by the end of the year.
Covaxx wasn’t clear in a release how it would get to that lofty number, and the vaccine is still in the early stages of testing as it prepares to wrap phase 1 trials.
While it lags in the clinic behind the major vaccine frontrunners, Covaxx could eventually make up ground in logistics. The company forecast UB-612 would be stable at normal refrigerated temperatures, providing a potential leg up over mRNA-based shots that require more stringent cold-chain storage.
Running months behind some of the leading COVID-19 vaccines, Covaxx is betting that a late entry with favorable logistics will still carve out a market for its candidate.
AstraZeneca, which read out early data showing an average 70% efficacy mark for its vaccine earlier this week, has made essentially the same pitch for its shot. The drugmaker’s adenovirus-based vaccine, dubbed AZD1222, can be stored and transported at normal refrigerated temps of 2 degrees to 8 degrees Celsius (36 degrees to 46 degrees Fahrenheit) for at least six months and can be administered in “existing healthcare settings.”
Those lenient standards could make the vaccine a runaway favorite in developing nations that do not have the ultra-cold storage to keep and transport more restrictive mRNA vaccines—Pfizer and BioNTech’s BNT162b2, for instance.
