Pharma giants Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) yesterday said that they have agreed to supply Britain with up to 60 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine.
The agreement covers a vaccine candidate developed by France’s Sanofi in partnership with the UK’s GSK and is subject to a “final contract.”
Amid a race to find a vaccine to halt the pandemic, Sanofi announced “ongoing discussions with the European Commission, with France and Italy on the negotiation team, and other governments to ensure global access to a novel coronavirus vaccine.”
Photo: AFP
Both companies voiced in a statement their commitment “to making their COVID-19 vaccine candidate affordable and available globally.”
The vaccine candidate “has the potential to play a significant role in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic, both in the UK and around the world,” GSK Vaccines president Roger Connor said.
Sanofi predicted regulatory approval for the vaccine “could be achieved by the first half of 2021.”
British Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Alok Sharma, quoted in the statement, hailed the progress, but said that “the fact remains that there are no guarantees.”
“In the meantime, it is important that we secure early access to a diverse range of promising vaccine candidates, like GSK and Sanofi, to increase our chances of finding one that works so we can protect the public and save lives,” Sharma said.
Britain has already secured access to 90 million doses of potential coronavirus vaccines in deals with biotech firms BioNTech SE, Pfizer Inc and Valneva SE.
The deals involve 30 million doses of a vaccine being developed by US pharma giant Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, and 60 million doses of another created by France’s Valneva.
The government in London has also said that it would purchase 100 million doses of a vaccine being trialed by the University of Oxford in partnership with AstraZeneca PLC.
“This diversity of vaccine types is important because we do not yet know which, if any, of the different types of vaccine will prove to generate a safe and protective response to COVID-19,” Kate Bingham, chairwoman of the British government’s vaccine task force, was quoted as saying.
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