U.S. offers investment to boost global COVID vaccine capacity

Pressed to address gaping inequality in global COVID-19 vaccines, the Biden administration took steps Wednesday to make billions of dollars available to drugmakers to scale up domestic production to share with the world and prepare for the next pandemic.

Under the new initiative, the government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is soliciting pharmaceutical companies with proven ability to make the more-effective mRNA vaccines to bid for U.S. investment in scaling up their manufacturing. Pfizer and Moderna produce the two U.S.-approved mRNA shots.

The White House hopes the move will build capacity to produce an additional 1 billion shots per year.