Inside Operation Warp Speed’s $26b sprint for a vaccine

It's expensive, secretive and America's best chance of emerging from the economic and health crisis that played such a big role in the election.

Operation Warp Speed, the US search for a vaccine, has an overall budget to award of as much as $US18 billion ($26 billion). AP

Stephanie Baker and Cynthia Koons

Nov 11, 2020 – 9.00am

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On a late August day in an industrial corner of Baltimore that had been mostly silenced by the pandemic, a red-brick factory was buzzing with activity.

Deep in the building, in a zone called Area 3, the stainless steel shell of a bioreactor lay on its side, having just arrived from Massachusetts. Employees had begun the task of making the bioreactor operational. Within weeks it would be the centre of a production line for coronavirus vaccines.

Bloomberg Businessweek