(Reuters) – Novavax Inc said on Wednesday it has signed an agreement with the Australian government to supply 40 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, NVX-CoV2373.
A vaccine that works is seen as a game-changer in the battle against the coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.2 million people worldwide.
Novavax, among the handful of companies that are conducting late-stage trials of experimental COVID-19 vaccines, has already signed separate deals to supply its shot to the United States, the UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea and India.
The drugmaker said on Wednesday it will deliver its vaccine to Australia starting as early as the first half of 2021.
The company also reaffirmed that it expects to report data from a late-stage trial of the vaccine being conducted in Britain by the first quarter of 2021.
Novavax last week delayed the start of a late-stage U.S. trial of its vaccine by roughly a month to the end of November, citing delays in scaling up the manufacturing process.
(Reporting by Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
