Between pressure, standards, risk and the need to go quickly, the pharmaceutical industry is busy finding a vaccine against Covid.

While the AstraZeneca laboratory has decided to suspend the clinical trial it was conducting on its vaccine against Covid-19, Nicolas Barré takes stock of a current economic issue.

The news had the effect of a bomb: the AstraZeneca laboratory has decided to suspend the clinical trial it was conducting on its vaccine against Covid-19.

And yet, for Nicolas Barré, this is good news.

We must salute this decision of the AstraZeneca lab and more generally salute the rigor shown by the pharmaceutical industry in the fight against Covid.

We are far from the caricature, alas too frequent and too easy, of the big labs which would be interested only in the profit and the good behavior of their stock market price.

The big Western labs are under unprecedented pressure from governments and public opinion to develop vaccines as quickly as possible.

But they do not give in to this pressure, they do not give up on standards and scientific rigor, they do not rush the tests.

It is reassuring and it is fundamental.

And that, despite growing political pressure.

This pressure on the pharmaceutical industry is of course very strong in countries like China and Russia: at the beginning of August we saw the shattering announcements of Vladimir Putin who wants to make believe that Russia is in pole position in the vaccine race.

But the pressure is also strong in the United States: Donald Trump wants a vaccine to be ready before the presidential election in early November and for this he seeks to get health authorities to lower their usual requirements to validate a vaccine - this that they refuse to do.

And this is mainly refused by the industry since the nine largest world laboratories, including Sanofi in France, have just reaffirmed, in a rare joint declaration, that they would not compromise on their scientific requirements.

Proof that we can combine profit and scientific rigor.

The pharmaceutical industry has understood the value of trust.

It takes it to get people to accept vaccines.

In France, Pays de Pasteur, polls show that a quarter of the population would not be ready to be vaccinated.

To overcome this reluctance, the labs know that they must be exemplary, uncompromising.

Not only can we combine a market economy, search for profit and scientific rigor.

But basically, it's the only recipe that works.