PARIS – French pharmaceutical Sanofi announced today that it will help produce 125 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine developed by its rivals Pfizer and BioNTech, given its candidate’s delay.
Germany’s BioNTech will initially produce the vaccines from the summer at the Sanofi plant in Frankfurt, Sanofi explained in a statement. The company has not disclosed the financial details of the deal.
The French government has pressured Sanofi to use its facilities to help produce its competitors’ vaccines due to significant supply and demand problems for the few vaccines already available.
“We are acutely aware that the sooner vaccines are available, the more lives can be saved,” said Paul Hudson, Sanofi’s CEO in the statement.
Sanofi and its UK partner GlaxoSmithKline will begin a new phase 2 trial for its Covid-19 vaccine next month, the company added. The two pharmaceutical companies announced last month that their drug won’t be ready until the end of 2021, as they need to improve efficacy in the elderly.
The European Union has been widely criticized for the slow implementation of a mass vaccination program. The block approved the use of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and the European Medicines Agency will investigate on Friday to give the green light to the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.