Paris (AFP)
The future vaccine against the Covid-19 developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with AstraZeneca will be sold "at cost price" all over the world, said Tuesday the boss of the British pharmaceutical company, which hopes to deliver it by "the end of the year".
"Our objective is to bring the vaccine to everyone, we have an objective which is also to do it without profit, that is to say that we will bring the vaccine at cost to all geographies of the world, "Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, told RTL.
"At cost, it will be around 2.5 euros per unit," he added.
US group Johnson & Johnson intends to do the same, while Pfizer, Merck and Moderna confirmed Tuesday that they would not sell their potential coronavirus vaccines at cost, during a hearing in the US Congress.
The AstraZenaca vaccine, under development, produced a significant immune response and demonstrated safety in patients in early stage clinical trials.
Its efficacy must be established in a phase 3 trial, on a larger number of participants, before considering their large-scale commercialization.
"Our hope is to have results in the fall (for this phase 3 study) so we think we will be able to deliver the vaccine at the end of the year at the latest", Mr. Soriot said.
"We work hand in hand with the regulators, we exchange our data on a day-to-day basis so that the evaluation is done very quickly. We run clinical trials in parallel, which allows us to save time", he detailed.
The group has started producing the vaccine "in quite a few areas" so that they are "ready for use if clinical results are positive," according to the AstraZeneca boss.
Another vaccine project carried out in Wuhan (China) by researchers from several organizations has produced encouraging results in preliminary clinical trials.
Many researchers and laboratories around the world are racing against the clock to find a safe and effective vaccine against Covid-19. Nearly 200 vaccine candidates have been developed, including 23 in the clinical phase (tested in humans).
© 2020 AFP