Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Bayer AG agreed to produce CureVac NV’s experimental coronavirus vaccine to spur the rollout of a promising shot as European Union governments to rinse together for extra supplies to stimulate a sultry campaign.
The move will not have an immediate effect, although it is good news for Europe after a week of chaos around the program. Controversy escalated after the European Commission threatened to curb vaccine exports – sparking global outrage – in response to news that AstraZeneca Plc would miss delivery targets.
Bayer’s manufacturing effort extends its current pact with CureVac over regulatory approval and worldwide distribution, and will begin delivery by the end of the year. It follows commitments from other European pharmaceutical giants Sanofi and Novartis AG to leverage their manufacturing capabilities to scale Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s Covid-19 Injection.
Major drug manufacturers offer the opportunity to boost the offerings smaller developers don’t, and companies are also under pressure to help, as new variants threaten the effectiveness of existing injections. Vaccines appear to be the only way out of the pandemic, which killed more than 2.2 million people worldwide.
“We will need vaccines after the summer,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said at a news conference on Monday. “It is possible that mutations that we cannot yet predict today will require vaccines to be adapted and changed. The mRNA technology makes this possible relatively quickly. ”
Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold crisis talks with pharmaceutical executives, regional German leaders and officials from the European Commission on Monday. The video call in Berlin comes after Ursula von der Leyen, Commission President, announced that Astra will deliver 9 million additional doses of vaccine to the EU in the first quarter.
The commission is expected to double down on Monday that a vaccination target of 70% of Europeans in the summer is achievable, but only if drugmakers deliver on their promised pledges, an official familiar with the matter said.
The Astra debacle shows how weak such commitments are. It triggered a crisis on Jan. 22 when it said problems at a factory in Belgium meant that delivery of doses would be significantly reduced this quarter.
The episode turned into a guilt that pitted the EU’s 27 countries against the pharmaceutical industry and sparked fears about a wave of vaccine nationalism that could stunt the fight against the pandemic.
How vaccine nationalism flares up over scarce supplies: QuickTake
Bayer’s Stefan Oelrich, who heads the company’s pharmaceutical division, said talks with the German government helped convince it to produce a vaccine – even though it has never done so before.
“We have the necessary competence” thanks to the experience of making biotech products, said Oelrich. Bayer expects to be able to produce 160 million doses of CureVac’s vaccine next year at its Wuppertal plant, near Düsseldorf.
Bayer shares rose 1.1% in trading in Frankfurt.
CureVac uptake is still being tested at a late stage, but Spahn has said the shot could get approval as early as March. The product is a messenger RNA vaccine similar to that of fellow German company BioNTech – which partnered with Pfizer – and Moderna Inc. Those injections were the first to be approved in Europe and elsewhere, and showed about 95% effectiveness in trials.
– With the help of Nikos Chrysoloras