Johnson & Johnson to begin human trials on COVID-19 vaccine by Sept.

Yahoo Finance's Seana Smith and Anjalee Khemlani discuss Johnson & Johnson starting human trials for the coronavirus vaccine by September and the FDA approving emergency use of the malaria pill for COVID-19 treatment.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: We have some developments over the weekend for treatments and possibly vaccines. We had the FDA approving a drug used to treat malaria. This could be used now for emergency use for patients who are hospitalized. We've heard President Trump tout this treatment in the past. And we also had Johnson & Johnson this morning saying that human testing of its vaccine will likely begin in September.

Anjalee Khemlani has been closely watching these stories for us. And Anjalee, what can you tell us at this point?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Thanks, Seana. Yeah, so Johnson & Johnson is coming out with saying that they have found, finally, a vaccine candidate of the many that they were looking at before. And so that's where that September timeline comes from. It does pull back a little bit from November, which is where they originally saw themselves, starting the human trials.

And then this rolls out to possibly an early 2021 vaccine on the market. But that does not change the timeline that we know. We know we've been talking about a 12 to 18-month timeline for a vaccine. This fits right into that.

What Johnson & Johnson is doing, however, is already producing to meet that market demand, should it arrive early next year. And they're ready to have a billion doses ready for the market.

Now, Moderna is another company that is working on a vaccine. And they already came out with starting clinical trials within a record 63 days. They're a much smaller company and may not have the resources to ramp up.

But in addition, complicating that right now, they actually had to pause their clinical trial. So that is really throwing a wrench in things right now for the development of a vaccine because clinical trials are really getting hit. As social distancing measures are in place, clinical trials are finding themselves unable to really check in with participants or even dose them appropriately as the health care system more broadly is strained. So we're kind of waiting right now to see how this all pans out and whether or Johnson & Johnson will also face any similar pressures.