Army gives Pfizer $3.5B contract to make 500 million COVID vaccine doses

The Pentagon announced Monday the US Army had awarded Pfizer a $3.5 billion contract to manufacture 500 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine by the end of next year for distribution around the world.

The order matches the number of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses purchased by the US government under an agreement announced last year by the Trump administration. Last month, Pfizer announced that the latest batch of 200 million doses would be delivered between October of this year and April of 2022. In June, Pfizer and Germany-based BioNTech announced that they would provide 500 million doses “at a not-for-profit price” to the feds for distribution to more than 100 countries around the world, most of them in Africa.