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As has already happened with other candidate vaccines, the European Commission has entered into agreements with Modern, the pharmaceutical company that yesterday announced that its compound has an efficacy of 94.5%. The negotiation refers to “the supply of 160 million doses but now we continue with the negotiations and we must see how to translate this intention into a contract,” said the spokesman for the European Commission. Stefan De Keersmaecker. She was the president yesterday Ursula von der Leyen to announce the start of the agreement, underlining that today “a new contract with Curevac for the vaccine against Covid-19 will be authorized, which will allow us to obtain up to 405 million doses. This is the fifth contract in our vaccine portfolio and we are working on a sixth with Moderna. We have already completed a exploratory negotiation and we hope to finish this too soon ”.
Brussels, last week, had given the green light to buy up to 300 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine. The vaccine, whatever the candidate, must pass all the stages of the authorization procedure of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) before use. “Safety is key to us, and there is no reason to be skeptical,” explained Health and Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides. Times are fast because many investments have been made and all technologies have been fully exploited. The controls will be rigorous. “The 27 states will all have access immediate to the first dose interval and will be received according to the population. On the other hand, the Curevac contract is the fifth that Brussels has closed, after those of Pfizer-Biontech, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK and Janssen Pharmaceutica. To which Moderna will join. In fact, the strategy is to have a range of possibilities for vaccine production in Europe.
Pharmaceutical company Moderna announced that preliminary data from a large phase 3 study underway to test a possible Covid-19 vaccine suggests an efficacy of 94.5%. While it is a promising step, a Moderna press release is not enough to draw firm conclusions.. Talking about the efficacy and usefulness of the vaccine requires full transparency of clinical trial data. Knowing that it will not be possible to guarantee a sufficient number of vaccine doses quickly, pharmaceutical companies – says Doctors Without Borders in a note – should not create more barriers to production by other companies, preventing the commercialization of others. similar products, once their efficacy and safety have been demonstrated. In addition to respecting the announced commitment not to impose any patents, Moderna must share all information about the vaccine, including technology., the data and know-how needed to do so, so that other manufacturers can secure production and ensure access to this life-saving vaccine. The world eagerly awaits the positive results of the Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials in hopes of having a tool that will help keep the pandemic under control, but validating them for distribution will be of little use if these vaccines are not widely distributed. fair way. to people around the world at a completely transparent cost price ”, says Stella Egidi, MSF Medical Director.
The company warns Europe that the prolongation of the negotiations runs the risk of slowing down distribution, while other countries have priority because they have been signing for months. Moderna’s managing director, Stéphane Bancel, told the French press: “It is clear that the delay will not limit the total amount (of doses, ed), but will slow down the distribution.” United States has booked 100 million doses in early August and “we already have several million doses in stock” in the United States, ready for distribution as soon as there is a commercial authorization, presumably in December. “Several million doses” have already been produced in the United States. With Europe “there are talks, but there is no contract,” said Bancel of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the company is based. On August 24, “advanced negotiations” were announced with the European Commission for the purchase of 80 million doses of the vaccine, but no formal commitments have been signed since then. Meanwhile, Moderna has signed contracts with the Canada, Japan, Israel, Qatar, United Kingdom, in addition to the 100 million doses promised to the United States in early August.
The problem is that “it is full of administrative things, files, alignments between countries and it is difficult to manage when you are 27 years old compared to when you are alone,” adds the CEO. But “the longer they wait, the more delivery will be postponed over time,” insists Bancel. according to which the negotiations did not stall on the price. However, the senior manager does not intend to say more about it. For all countries outside the US, vaccine production will take place in Switzerland, in the factories of the Lonza group, and the bottling of the bottles in Madrid, in the Rovi group. If the vaccine were authorized by the European Medicines Agency before the end of the year, but no contract had yet been signed, “the allocations for the first deliveries would not include Europe. So the vaccine would go to Switzerland, a bit in Japan in Israel, in Canada, that is, to the countries that have requested it. But I won’t be able to send it to anyone who hasn’t ordered it ”.
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