Contracts announced by the United States and the European Union with pharmaceutical companies to ensure a vaccine for the Coronavirus, the latest being Friday with Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline.
French Sanofi announced - in a statement Friday - that the experimental vaccine, which is being developed in conjunction with the British company Glaxo Smith Klein, was chosen for the American program "Operation Warp Speed" which aims to provide the Americans with access to the vaccine as quickly as possible, through a number of agreements. Signed with pharmaceutical laboratories.
According to the contract details, the two companies will receive up to $ 2.1 billion in exchange for delivering 100 million doses of the vaccine as an initial quantity.
Sanofi said that the cooperation "will help finance activities to develop and increase the manufacturing capacity of Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline in the United States to produce the vaccine."
The French laboratory, which will receive the bulk of the funding from the United States government, said that Washington will also have the option of obtaining 500 million additional doses in the long run.
For its part, the European Commission announced Friday that it had booked, in the name of the 27 member states of the European Union, the amount of 300 million doses of the Sanofi experimental vaccine against the Corona virus.
According to Brussels, the contract with Sanofi "will provide an opportunity for all member states to purchase the vaccine." Negotiations between the commission and Sanofi have enabled an agreement to be put in place to purchase 300 million doses if a "safe and effective" vaccine is produced.
The statement said - according to the French Press Agency - that the Commission is continuing "intensive discussions" with other groups working on the production of a similar vaccine.
"Although we do not know today which vaccine will be most effective in the end, Europe is investing in a diversified portfolio of promising vaccines, based on different technological patterns," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen explained, adding that this increases their chances of quickly obtaining Effective treatment against the virus.
The French government welcomed the announcement by the European Commission, which "allows every member state of the European Union to request the vaccine on preferential terms, as soon as the vaccine provides sufficient evidence of its effectiveness and the absence of side effects."
In a statement to Agence France-Presse, Minister Plenipotentiary of the French Minister of Economy, Aniyas Bannier Ronache, welcomed the "production of this vaccine on a large scale in France."
This new contract represents an excellent opportunity for the French pharmaceutical giant, as told by French agency Tomma Triusph, Sanofi Pasteur's president, who added, "We can move forward very quickly with these risk-sharing agreements, with the steps of industrial and clinical development of anti-Corona vaccines."
Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline announced last Wednesday an agreement on 60 million doses with the United Kingdom. The experimental vaccine of the two companies relies on the recombinant protein technology Sanofi used to produce an anti-influenza vaccine, and on the adjuvant to enhance the immune response used in the event of a pandemic and developed by GlaxoSmithKline.
Sanofi expects to start testing its first and second stage volunteers in September, before the third and final stage by the end of the year, to obtain approval for a vaccine marketing that could take place in the first half of 2021.
Risk sharing
Prior to the new agreement, the United States had already spent more than $ 6 billion since March to fund competing projects to produce a new vaccine for the Corona virus at established laboratories, such as Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca, and Two small biotechnology companies are Novavax and modRNA.
And US Secretary of Health Alex Azar said - as quoted by Sanofi - "The group of vaccines agreed upon under the government program increases the chances of obtaining at least one vaccine that is safe and effective by the end of the year."
Such processes are increasing all over the world, because in the context of combating the epidemic, laboratories must accelerate the stages of vaccine development and prepare their own production units without even knowing the results of clinical trials, and then without knowing whether the vaccine will actually be produced.
These agreements allow companies to share risks with countries, in exchange for governments ensuring access to vaccine supplies if the research is successful.
This competition raises controversy because it raises the issue of developing countries obtaining the vaccine, as they do not have the means to finance such large contracts, and this fuels fears that they may not get it in the end.
In the middle of July, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution confirming that any vaccine against the Corona epidemic must be considered a "global public good", stressing the need for "prompt, fair and unimpeded access to medicines, vaccines, diagnoses, safe, affordable, effective and relevant treatments." the quality".