The German company (CureVac) - in which the Qatar Investment Fund has a stake - and the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer announced that they have expanded their cooperation to produce Corona vaccines, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel seeks to provide Corona vaccination to every citizen by the end of next summer .

In the wake of the summit talks on vaccination (the vaccination summit), Merkel said yesterday evening, Monday, February 1, 2021, that it is possible to maintain this expectation in light of the current supply pledges made by manufacturers.

Merkel added that her government had received the assurances it needed to renew its promise to provide a vaccine against the Coronavirus to all Germans by the end of the summer.

The chancellor and the country's 16 prime ministers met on Monday to discuss possible improvements to the country's vaccination program.

Many federal ministers and representatives of vaccine-producing companies and the European Commission participated in the videoconference.

"We will be able to provide vaccination to every citizen by the end of the third quarter," she said, adding that this promise was possible despite the delay in some deliveries because the government had received assurances about the vaccine stocks that would arrive every 3 months.

According to Merkel's statements reported by German radio Deutsche Welle, this pledge is possible even if two pharmaceutical companies - Johnson & Johnson and Curivac - have not obtained approval for their vaccines, but if the two companies are added, there will be a greater amount of supplies. .

The German company BioNTech and the US company Pfizer promised to provide an additional 75 million doses of the Coronavirus vaccine to the European Union in the second quarter of 2021.

Qatar Investment Authority

And last July, the German biotechnology company, Curvac, announced that the Qatar Investment Authority had acquired an undisclosed stake in the company as part of a $ 126 million financing round.

The German government also invested $ 343 million in the previous June, in exchange for a 23% contract in the company.

The Tübingen-based company and backed by billionaire Bill Gates secured a loan of 75 million euros ($ 85.79 million) from the European Investment Bank last July.

Curvac said at the time that $ 126 million had been raised from the Qatar Investment Authority and a group of current and new investors.

A spokesman refused to disclose the size of the Qatari stake or give details about it.

Curvac announced today, Tuesday, that it has obtained $ 450 million through the capital increase.

It said 5 million shares had been put up for sale at an issue price of $ 90 per share.

Curvac has been listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in New York since August 2020, and Curvac and the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer announced on Monday that they have expanded the cooperation already concluded between them since the beginning of this year.

Bayer plans to produce 160 million doses of the Corona vaccine developed by Curvac by 2022, and it intends to produce more doses in the following year, and production is scheduled to start at the end of 2021.

Curvac is currently developing the vaccine, which is similar to the one developed by the German company Biontech in cooperation with the American company Pfizer, on an active substance called messenger DNA (mRNA), a type of intermediate molecule that includes instructions for producing proteins .

The Curvac researchers provided the "MRNA" material with instructions for producing the emerging corona virus protein for use in the anti-virus vaccine.

Through cooperation with Bayer, Curvac hopes to be able to launch its vaccine against Corona this summer.

$ 30 billion

Last July, Qatar's ambassador to Germany, Mohammed Jaham Al-Kuwari, said that Qatar's investments in Germany amount to 25 billion euros (about 30 billion dollars), and there are 300 German companies in the Qatari market.

In an interview with the magazine of the German Society for the Middle and Near East, "Numov", in its fourth annual issue, the ambassador praised the level of Qatari-German relations, describing it as a "document" in various fields, especially in the economic field, as Qatar invests in major German companies and aspires to continue strengthening Relations with Germany.

He added that Qatar and Germany have close relations in various fields, especially in the economic field through investment and opportunities available to both sides, pointing out that the economy of the State of Qatar is continuously booming, as Qatar seeks to diversify its economic sources by investing in major companies such as Siemens. Deutsche Bank, and Volkswagen.

Last October, Chairman of the Qatar Chamber, Sheikh Khalifa bin Jassim Al Thani, after a joint meeting of the Executive Office, the Board of Directors and the General Assembly of the German Arab Chamber of Commerce and Industry, revealed in a statement that the trade exchange between Qatar and Germany amounted to about 946 million dollars during the first half of 2020 Despite the precautionary measures due to the outbreak of the new Corona virus.