Source: ChildrensHealthDefense.org
The U.S. government will spend $5 billion on a program to accelerate the development of new coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics, White House officials announced this week in an interview with The Washington Post.
Dubbed “Project NextGen,” the new initiative will serve as the successor to the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed,” launched in March 2020 to expedite the development of COVID-19 vaccines.
Similar to Operation Warp Speed, Project NextGen — with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation — will encourage public-private partnerships.
According to Reuters, the project will be managed out of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which will coordinate across various government agencies and private-sector actors, covering “all phases of development from lab research and clinical trials to delivery.”
“Scientists, public heath [sic] experts and politicians have called for the initiative, warning that existing therapies have steadily lost their effectiveness and that new ones are needed,” the Post reported.
The new initiative is based on a “roadmap” for the development of new coronavirus vaccines, formulated by the University of Minnesota and led by a former Biden administration official.
A ‘roadmap’ for ‘better’ coronavirus vaccines
Operation Warp Speed invested approximately $30 billion in the development, manufacturing and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, according to USA Today, with six drugmakers each receiving more than $1 billion, along with a promise of a “guaranteed market” if they successfully developed a vaccine….