What AstraZeneca's $1B funding for Oxford's coronavirus vaccine means for the U.S.

Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca secures $1.2 billon to produce the University of Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine. Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani breaks down the latest developments.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: We are going to move ahead to an issue that a lot of people are paying attention to, and that is AstraZeneca announcing that it can make up to a billion doses of its potential vaccine. But it's almost like Henry Ford making a Model T before the invention of the wheel. Anjalee Khemlani, their-- their potential vaccine, the Oxford vaccine, it hasn't even passed human trials yet.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: That's correct. It hasn't passed human trials yet but neither has any others. This goes back to what we've talked to with every other pharma company who is producing at risk anything, whether it's a treatment or a vaccine right now, in order to meet sort of this global demand that we've never seen before. You know, everyone is going to want whatever hits the market first. And there have been questions about what will happen if that thing that hits first is actually China's vaccine candidate.

But meanwhile, AstraZeneca has been with-- partnering with Oxford university on their vaccine candidate, which is further ahead than Moderna. But it's not as far ahead as China. So again, we have to look at it that.

The 1 billion that Barda has invested in AstraZeneca is significant, because it is more than double what it has invested or funded for any other company that we've seen so far, including Johnson and Johnson. And so that's really significant, kind of speaks to the confidence level of that, you know, vaccine getting out there first or at least further ahead than any of the candidates at home. Really interesting to play-- how it's going to play out in terms of, you know, where-- where these vaccine candidates head, Adam.

ADAM SHAPIRO: The other issue too, not only vaccine but regarding testing is helping the economy reopen. We saw the auto manufacturers like Ford open their plants Monday. And yet as they test, they had to shut two plants down. We're going to go through a lot of this, aren't we?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: We are. And that's-- you know, within two days of reopening, they had two plants had to close, delayed at first, but now back to closing. And that is-- that's exactly the-- word for word, the concerns that a lot of public health experts have. And this goes back to, even though we're seeing those trends of declining cases in some of the major hotspots like New York, New Jersey, and even on the west coast, we are anticipating that there are going to be an increase in cases. We're already seeing increased hospitalizations in Georgia, which we all know was one of those places that was getting a lot of criticism for reopening pretty early and pretty widely and liberally, so definitely something to keep an eye on.

Globally, we know that the case count has surpassed 5 million. And while, again, in some major hotspots that we've seen a flattening of the curve, just the way that it sort of hit in waves from Asia to Europe to the US, we're going to see other parts of the world also seeing increases. So it's not going away anytime soon, Adam.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Anjalee, thank you very much. And that's why everyone is racing to try and develop a vaccine. To discuss that, we--