President Donald Trump (left) and Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed (Alex Brandon, AP Images)

White House names fi­nal­ists for Op­er­a­tion Warp Speed — with 5 ex­pect­ed names and one no­table omis­sion

A month af­ter word first broke of the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s plan to rapid­ly ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of a Covid-19 vac­cine, the White House has se­lect­ed the five vac­cine can­di­dates they con­sid­er most like­ly to suc­ceed, The New York Times re­port­ed.

Most of the names in the plan, known as Op­er­a­tion Warp Speed, will come as lit­tle sur­prise to those who have watched the last four months of vac­cine de­vel­op­ments: Mod­er­na, which was the first vac­cine to reach hu­mans and is now the fur­thest along of any US ef­fort; J&J, which has not gone in­to tri­als but re­ceived around $500 mil­lion in fund­ing from BAR­DA ear­li­er this year; the joint As­traZeneca-Ox­ford ven­ture which was grant­ed $1.2 bil­lion from BAR­DA two weeks ago; Pfiz­er, which has been work­ing with the mR­NA biotech BioN­Tech; and Mer­ck, which just en­tered the race and ex­pects to put their two vac­cine can­di­dates in­to hu­mans lat­er this year.

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