Middle East Monitor – US President Joe Biden has announced that Merck & Co will help to produce rival Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid-19 vaccine in a partnership similar to those seen during World War Two, Reuters has reported. A wartime law is being invoked to require Merck & Co to help produce the newly-approved vaccine.
“As a consequence of the stepped-up process that I’ve ordered and just outlined,” explained Biden, “this country will have enough vaccine supply — I’ll say it again — for every adult in America by the end of May.”
According to the New York Times, Merck is the world’s second-largest vaccine manufacturer. Its own attempt at a coronavirus vaccine was unsuccessful.
US officials described Biden’s vision of a wartime effort to fight the coronavirus as being similar to the manufacturing campaigns in place when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.
