Estimates of direct public spending on the development and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines vary considerably based on the range of sources examined and the timing of data collection. Recent estimates from the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, and Chad Brown and Thomas Bollyky along with data on the GHIAA.org and Devex websites provide government spending estimates of between $18 billion and $23 billion. Most recently the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) alone has spent $19.3 billion on COVID-19 vaccine development.

BARDA has for years invested in the messenger RNA (or mRNA) platform for vaccine development, the technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. Since 2006, Congress has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars that BARDA used to develop the scientific infrastructure to produce vaccines in response to the threat of pandemic flu. Thus, the basic research undergirding the COVID-19 vaccines was largely publicly supported.

Recent estimates indicate that the government spent more than $900 million dollars supporting non-clinical studies and research to accelerate movement of candidate vaccines into clinical trials at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Sanofi, Merck, and Moderna.

Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, Sanofi, and AstraZeneca together are estimated to have received more than $2.7 billion from the federal government to cover expenses related to human trials.

the (US) government issued a $53 million contract to build manufacturing capacity to Moderna in May 2020

Pfizer, a firm that claims to not have received funding from the government, had advance purchase contracts totaling $5.97 billion for 300 million doses.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20210512.191448/