They spent some of that $12 million dating back to October when the first of those deals was done (listed in the 10Q from November). I have no idea what their monthly outlay is at this point - so I can only guess at that (which is probably pretty useless). I know they had to pay Cognate some amount of cash towards the debt - $5 or 7 million? I can't remember without looking it up.
So my thoughts are either:
They need more cash than what the $12 million brought in to see them to the plan - whatever the plan is, lol.
Or
They are offering this financing to ensure they've very publicly made their shareholders aware that they have the opportunity to do the same as Cognate.
Or
They want to increase the vote count with longs.
We don't know what the research and development costs are going towards. Of course it's highly unlikely it's going towards making any vaccines - except for possibly a few for some small number of patients in the UK. But we don't really don't know how the funding is being spent, or why they want to bring in up to an additional $12 million.
Looks like at least the "interim blinded data" is likely not coming by December 29 (the last day of this financing), so perhaps the possible delay on that is why?