Covid-19 roundup: J&J part­ners with Unit­ed­Health to hit the gas on vac­cine tri­al en­roll­ment; BioN­Tech CEO Ugur Sahin hits back at Trump while his vac­cine gets cleared for Chi­na test­ing

Af­ter Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech read out the first Phase III in­ter­im analy­sis for their Covid-19 vac­cine and Mod­er­na an­nounced it’s not far be­hind, John­son & John­son is look­ing to catch up.

The phar­ma is part­ner­ing with Unit­ed­Health Group to speed up en­roll­ment in the hopes of re­duc­ing their tri­al time by half, ac­cord­ing to a Bloomberg re­port. J&J head of glob­al R&D Math­ai Mam­men told the news agency that they’ve on­ly en­rolled a few thou­sand pa­tients in their 60,000-per­son tri­al, adding that the com­pa­ny’s ini­tial goal of hav­ing da­ta this year is now “a bit of a stretch.”

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