US pharma giant Merck & Co is wading into the race to find a vaccine or treatment for Covid-19. The New Jersey-based company is joining forces with nonprofit research group IAVI on a preclinical candidate based on the same platform used by its Ervebo, the world's only licensed Ebola vaccine.

The development project is receiving $38 million from US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Plans for the cooperation foresee starting human trials sometime this year, with an eye toward delivering rapid immunity with a single dose. The partners will pursue development of the vaccine together, with Merck handling regulatory filings.

“We believe a range of medicines and vaccines will be needed to end the pandemic, and we will continue to pursue multiple pathways and collaborate with others”, the drugmaker said in a statement, adding that it is “optimistic the industry’s efforts will create new tools.”

Simultaneously with the announcement of plans to cooperate with IAVI, Merck said it would acquire privately owned Themis to gain access to a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Swiss biotech with partner Institut Pasteur of France.

The US drugmaker has also signed on to collaborate with closely held US-based Ridgeback Bio on finding a potential Covid-19 antiviral treatment. Ridgeback’s orally available EIDD-2801 antiviral candidate is currently in early clinical development.

Merck's first venture into the coronavirus sector follows an announcement in April that the company planned a "broad-based development program" targeting Covid-19.

Like many other drugmakers, Merck said at the time it had "teams of scientists" scanning drugs and vaccines that might work. CEO Ken Frazier told the newspaper Financial Times, however, that the12- to 18-month timeline often envisioned for Covid-19 vaccines is "very aggressive" and "not something I would put out there that I would want to hold Merck to.

"You want to make sure that when you put a vaccine into millions if not billions of people, it is safe,” Frazier added.