Johnson & Johnson plans to start testing the company’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine in youths aged 12 to 18 as soon as possible, a company executive said at a meeting held by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Leading pharmaceutical companies – including Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca – are racing ahead to develop and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine.

Pfizer indicated that the company’s Phase III clinical trial of 44,000 volunteers with partner BioNTech needed less than 2,000 people to be fully enrolled.

French drugmaker Sanofi and Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline will supply 200 million doses of their Covid-19 candidate vaccine to a global inoculation scheme backed by the World Health Organization.