US offers investment to boost global COVID vaccine capacity

By ZEKE MILLER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is making billions of dollars available to drugmakers to scale up domestic production of COVID-19 vaccines. It hopes that will build capacity to produce an additional 1 billion shots per year to share globally as well as prepare for the next pandemic. Under the new initiative previewed Wednesday, the government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is soliciting pharmaceutical companies with proven ability to make the more-effective mRNA vaccines to bid for U.S. investment in scaling up their manufacturing abilities. Drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna produce the two U.S.-approved mRNA shots. The Biden administration believes the boosted capacity of COVID-19 shots would help ease a global shortage of doses.