Financial Times: E.U. to spend billions to secure coronavirus vaccine
“Brussels plans to pump billions of euros into advance purchase deals with pharmaceutical companies for potential coronavirus vaccines, in a sign of intensifying rich country efforts to secure supplies of any future treatment. The E.U. proposes using a ‘large majority’ of a €2.7bn emergency fund for the effort but is also committed to ensuring fair access worldwide to pandemic remedies, according to a draft European Commission strategy. … The new fund would avoid companies whose only manufacturing capacity is in the U.S., since Washington has indicated it wants U.S.-made medicines for itself, an E.U. official said…” (Peel et al., 6/12).

Washington Post: Can old vaccines from science’s medicine cabinet ward off coronavirus?
“Two tried-and-true vaccines — a century-old inoculation against tuberculosis and a decades-old polio vaccine once given as a sugar cube — are being evaluated to see if they can offer limited protection against the coronavirus. Tests are already underway to see if the TB vaccine can slow the novel coronavirus, while other researchers writing in a scientific journal Thursday propose using the polio vaccine, which once was melted on children’s tongues…” (Johnson/Mufson, 6/11).

Additional coverage of efforts to develop SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and therapies is available from ABC, CIDRAP News, CNN, The Lancet, NBC, Reuters (2), SciDev.Net, and VOA.