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France protested this Thursday after the announcement of the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi that it will give priority to the United States if it finds a vaccine against Covid-19 and President Emmanuel Macron He estimated that the vaccine against this virus that has left nearly 300,000 dead across the planet should be “a global public good.”
“The efforts made in recent months show the need for this vaccine to be a global public good, outside the laws of the market,” Macron said after Sanofi He affirmed that he could assign the first coronavirus vaccines to the United States, since the authorities of this country have invested in its development.
The US government will be “entitled to the largest orders”, since this country “has invested” and “shares the risk”, The group’s CEO, Paul Hudson, said in an interview with the Bloomberg agency on Wednesday.
The Briton, who took office last year, urged Europe on Thursday to “share the risks” to make a vaccine.
His comments unleashed a wave of outrage from the French government and health experts, that emphasized the tens of millions of euros that Sanofi has received for the investigation by the French State.
“Equal access to this vaccine for all is not negotiable,” French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Twitter, an argument that the European Union agreed that considered that access to treatment should be “universal”.
“It would be unacceptable for us to have privileged access to this or that country for financial reasons,” Secretary of State for the Economy Agnès Pannier-Runacher told radio.
The French presidency announced that it will hold talks with Sanofi executives at the Elysee Palace early next week.
‘Americans have been effective’
The director of Sanofi in France, Olivier Bogillot, tried to quell the controversy and assured on Thursday that “The goal is for this vaccine to be available at the same time in the United States, France and Europe in the same way”.
But in fact this will be possible “if Europeans work as fast as Americans,” added Bogillot.
“The American government mobilized heavily financially very early on,” he stressed, adding that the United States had already planned to pay “several hundred million euros.”
“Americans have been effective in this period. The EU must also be so to help us be available quickly ”, he urged.
It’s a statement, Sanofi specified that “production on US soil would be mainly dedicated to the United States and the rest of (its) production capacities would go to Europe, France and the rest of the world.”
The company also committed to making this possible vaccine “accessible to all.”
In an open letter, more than 140 personalities, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, called for future vaccines or treatments against coronavirus be distributed “free to all”.
Sanofi, one of the world’s most powerful vaccine specialists, launched a search for a vaccine in February and signed a cooperation agreement with the Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which reports to the US Ministry of Health.
Regarding the investigation itselfBogillot confirmed that the goal was still to develop a usable vaccine within 18 to 24 months. This term is extremely fast compared to the normal term of about 10 years, he noted.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said some vaccines may be “ready to be approved a year from now,” but added that this deadline is “optimistic.”
There are currently over a hundred vaccine projects under development against Covid-19 worldwide, eight of which are already in clinical trials in the United States, China and Europe, according to the Jacques Delors Institute.
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