Japan aims to put coronavirus vaccines into use by June 2021, the health minister said, as the country strives to be fully ready to host the Tokyo Olympics, originally planned for this summer but postponed by one year due to the pandemic.
Drugmakers around the world are scrambling to develop a treatment or vaccine for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the highly infectious new coronavirus which has so far killed nearly 400,000 people worldwide.
“We will be securing production facilities in parallel with expedited vaccine development,” Japan’s Health Minister Katsunobu Kato told reporters as he outlined plans to bring vaccines into use by the end of the first half of 2021.
