Anti-Covid vaccine: lack of agreement with the EU, Valneva will negotiate country by country

2021-04-22T07:05:49.139Z

In the absence of an agreement with the European Union, the Franco-Austrian laboratory Valneva has decided to negotiate the supply of its vaccine country by country. At the beginning of January, the EU had planned to buy up to ...

Anti-Covid vaccine: lack of agreement with the EU, Valneva will negotiate country by country

An engineer-virologist in the biosafety laboratory of the Valneva SE group in Saint-Herblain, western France, July 30, 2020. JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER AFP / File

Text by: RFI Follow

3 min

In the absence of an agreement with the European Union, the Franco-Austrian laboratory Valneva has decided to negotiate the supply of its vaccine country by country.

In early January, the EU had planned to buy up to 60 million doses from the laboratory.

But no final agreement has been reached to date.

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Noting a lack of significant progress with the European Union, Valneva indicates that it will no longer give priority to centralized supply discussions with the European Commission.

In a statement, Thomas Lingelbach, the CEO, asserts his position: “

We have spent a lot of time and effort trying to meet the demands of the European Commission.

As a result, the Nantes-based laboratory should enter into bilateral agreements with those who wish to include its serum in their vaccine strategy.

Contacted by RFI, the Commission takes note of this decision, but specifies that so far, the conditions set by Valneva “

have not been considered acceptable

” by the Member States.

Unlike Pfizer or Moderna based on

messenger RNA

, Valneva has developed a vaccine that inoculates the inactivated Covid virus to elicit an immune response in patients.

The laboratory is preparing a phase 3 study, the last before the possible authorization of its vaccine, and hopes to be put on the market this fall.

The United Kingdom signed an agreement in July 2020 with Valneva before signing a partnership last September for a potential of 190 million doses purchased, for a value of 1.4 billion euros.

In the EU, so far only vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca are available.

The European Medicines Agency also estimated on Tuesday that the

Johnson & Johnson vaccine

, on which many countries rely to speed up immunization campaigns, can be used, due to a favorable benefit / risk ratio.

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Read also: Covid-19: vaccinations in the EU, between new orders and delivery delays

Anti-Covid vaccine: lack of agreement with the EU, Valneva will negotiate country by country

Anti-Covid vaccine: lack of agreement with the EU, Valneva will negotiate country by country

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