Illustration of Curevac's vaccine.
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SOPA Images / SIPA
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German pharmacy giant Bayer announced Monday that it would produce the Covid-19 vaccine developed by its competitor CureVac in 2022, while the sector is under pressure to accelerate rates.
"We have the skills to produce CureVac's mRNA vaccine," Stefan Oelrich, group director of the group's pharmaceuticals arm, told an online conference, adding that the goal was to produce 160 million doses by 2022. “The availability of vaccines must be further increased,” added Stefan Oelrich.
This vaccine candidate is in phase 3 of clinical trials
These capacities are in addition to production in the existing CureVac network of 300 million doses this year and one billion in 2022, explained Franz-Werner Haas, boss of CureVac, whose vaccine project is currently in phase 3 of the clinical tests.
It is currently "in the process of certification", underlined the German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, during the same press conference.
Ensuring long-term vaccine production is all the more important in the face of possible mutations or the need for a second vaccination after one or more years, explained Stefan Spahn.
Bayer and the CureVac laboratory, based in Tübingen (southwestern Germany), announced a partnership in early January to accelerate the development of the vaccine.
"Bayer will bring its expertise and established infrastructure in areas such as clinical operations, regulatory affairs, pharmacovigilance, medical information, supply chain performance," the two companies said in a statement.
The European Commission has already signed a contract with this start-up specializing in messenger RNA, for the purchase of 405 million doses.
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