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AFP
French company Sanofi, the maker of drugs and vaccines, has caused a lot of controversy after comments that Americans have been given priority in a possible “Covid-19” vaccine.
Paul Hudson, the company’s chief executive, said Sanofi would prioritize the United States to reserve most of any virus vaccine it reaches.
Hudson raised the controversy after saying that the reason for his company’s decision is that “the United States government has the right to access any vaccine the company produces first because Washington invested in the company and took economic risks.”
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe responded immediately, saying that everyone had the same right to access the vaccine “without question.”
After that, the company again announced that it would not prioritize any country for any vaccine that could reach it.
“I will be very clear, there will be no priority for any country,” Sanofi President Serge Weinberg said Thursday.
“We are organized and have several manufacturing units. Some are in the United States, but many are in Europe and France,” he added.
Weinberg emphasized that the company CEO’s statements were “distorted”.
Sanofi operates 73 industrial sites in 32 countries and is developing a vaccine for the emerging coronavirus.
The French prime minister said he had spoken to Weinberg and ensured that all necessary steps were taken to obtain any possible vaccine produced by the company.
French President Emmanuel Macron noted that many recent events have shown that “any vaccine for Covid-19 should not be subject to market controls.”
Macron will meet with senior company officials next week.
Pollen race
A global outbreak of the Corona epidemic triggered the race among pharmaceutical companies for a vaccine, making this file a priority for all large companies.
The rush to get the vaccine is very scary, as this process takes more than a year, but the worldwide outbreak puts strong pressure on research centers to reduce this period.
Earlier this month, the European Union held an international meeting through electronic media to support efforts to find a vaccine against the Corona virus.
Participants in the conference, hosted by Britain and attended by the United States and Russia, pledged $ 8 billion from 40 countries to support efforts to achieve a vaccine and treatments for the epidemic.
Sanofi obtains partial funds from the American Advanced Biomedical Research Fund (Badra) and tens of millions of euros in tax revenue from France.
Hudson’s first comments, made during a meeting with the US Bloomberg Network. In the USA, they provoked criticism from politicians and party leaders in France, be it the extreme left or the right. Some of them confirmed that in recent years the company received 150 million euros of tax revenue.
Washington had sparked the same kind of controversy two months ago when it made an offer to buy the German pharmaceutical company (Korvac), which is focused on getting a vaccine against the virus.
But the company insisted on denying this and confirmed that it had not received any offer from the United States to buy its shares.
Sanofi and British company Glaxo have agreed to work together to produce a vaccine against the virus, but the deal has not yet resulted in any real work.
Clinical trials of any vaccine for the epidemic are expected to begin in the second half of this year, meaning that no vaccine will be economically available before the second half of next year.
