Merck Bets On a One-Shot Vaccine in Race With Its Faster Rivals
America’s top vaccine maker has kept a low profile during the pandemic but says convenience will be its advantage.
Daria Hazuda, Merck’s vice president for infectious diseases discovery.
Photographer: Sofie Kjorum Austlid for Bloomberg Businessweek
In the race for a Covid-19 vaccine, Merck & Co. looks slow. The drugmaker formally announced its plans just after Memorial Day, shortly before America’s death toll from the coronavirus passed 100,000. It says human trials of one of its shots will begin in mid-August, months behind the likes of AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Pfizer, whose vaccines have already begun large-scale testing. Pfizer has said it could approach regulators for an emergency use authorization as early as October. Merck told Congress last month that 2021 is the absolute earliest it expects to have a vaccine ready, and its top executives have cast doubt on the rosier predictions being made for other shots.
Suggesting that any vaccine candidate might be broadly available before the end of the year does the public a disservice, according to Merck Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Frazier. No successful vaccine has ever been developed and approved in under four years, a record Frazier’s company set in the 1960s. Merck’s pace, the CEO said in May, is deliberate, not flat-footed. “It’s not that we couldn’t have done something earlier,” he said, sounding ever so slightly defensive. “My colleagues have been working on this since the time coronavirus was first heard of, but they’ve taken their time and been very conscientious about which programs they think could make a difference over the long term.”