US President Joe Biden will announce that pharmaceutical company Merck will help Johnson & Johnson produce its Covid-19 vaccine, a senior government official told AFP on Tuesday.
No details on this agreement between the two American companies have yet been revealed.
President Biden is due to speak in the afternoon on the health crisis.
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This announcement could potentially allow a substantial increase in the number of doses rapidly distributed in the United States for this vaccine.
The vaccine from "
J&J
" obtained an authorization for emergency use in the country at the end of last week.
Shortly before, while speaking on the pace of the vaccination campaign in the United States, Joe Biden had said that "
even faster progress on vaccines
" would be made in March, indicating that announcements would be made. once authorization has been granted.
Johnson & Johnson has currently committed to ship 100 million doses to the United States before the end of June.
Some 3.4 million doses are already being distributed this week, said Jeff Zients, the coordinator of the team in charge of the fight against Covid-19 at the White House on Monday.
About 16 million more will be delivered by the end of March, he said.
At the end of January, Merck announced the interruption of work on its two vaccine projects against Covid-19, including the one developed in collaboration with the Pasteur Institute in France, for lack of convincing results during the first tests.
Such production agreements have already been concluded between Sanofi and the Pfizer / BioNTech alliance, the French laboratory having announced that it is packaging millions of doses of its competitor for Europe, for lack of being able to offer its own vaccine.
