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Reuters
Sanofi’s headquarters are in Paris and the company has received exemptions from French state taxes.
French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has traced an apparent promise to prioritize the U.S. market with any possible Covid-19 vaccine.
Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson sparked a dispute by saying that the United States government had “the right to the largest pre-order because it is invested in taking the risk.”
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe responded by saying that access for all was “non-negotiable”.
The Sanofi president has now promised equal access for all.
“I will be extremely clear: there will be no particular progress for any country,” Serge Weinberg told France 2 TV.
He said that Mr. Hudson’s words had been distorted.
Prime Minister Philippe said he had spoken to Weinberg and received “all necessary guarantees regarding the distribution of an eventual Sanofi vaccine.”
President Emmanuel Macron said recent efforts have shown that a vaccine should not be subject to market forces and that he will meet with senior Sanofi officials next week.
The EU insisted that all countries should have equal access to a vaccine. “The Covid-19 vaccine should be a global public good and its access must be fair and universal,” said European Commission spokesman Stefan de Keersmaecker, quoted by the AFP news agency.
Why is the subject so delicate for Sanofi?
The deadly coronavirus pandemic has made the search for a Covid-19 vaccine a top priority for laboratories around the world, with intense pressure to accelerate a process that generally takes years to develop.
Earlier this month, the EU chaired an online global summit to boost coronavirus research, and secured pledges of $ 8 billion (£ 6.5 billion) from some 40 countries and donors. The funds are intended to develop a coronavirus vaccine and treatments for Covid-19.
The UK co-sponsored the summit, but the United States and Russia did not participate.
Sanofi’s Covid-19 vaccine research is partially funded by the United States Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (Barda), but in recent years Sanofi has received tens of millions of euros in French government tax credits to help to your research.
Hudson’s remarks in a Bloomberg interview sparked an uproar between right and left politicians in France. Socialists estimated that Sanofi had received about € 150 million (£ 133 million; $ 162 million) in research tax credit and millions more in another tax credit.
Sanofi’s chief in France, Olivier Bogillot, said the goal was to have a vaccine “available to the United States, as well as to France and Europe at the same time.”
But speaking on the French news channel BFMTV, he said this would only be possible “if Europeans work as fast as Americans”, adding that the United States government has pledged to spend “several hundred million euros.”
The dispute recalled reports in March of a United States attempt to buy German biotech firm CureVac, which has also been investigating a possible vaccine. CureVac insisted that there was no attempt by the United States to buy the company or its manufacturing capacity.
Sanofi also partnered with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) last month to work on a vaccine, although trials have not yet started.
Sanofi’s head of vaccine research, John Shiver, says, “We are using an existing technology that was designed for influenza, and applying it to the new virus that causes Covid-19 disease.”
Sanofi says that GSK “will contribute its adjuvant technology, an added ingredient to enhance the immune response, reduce the amount of vaccine protein required per dose, and improve the chances of administering an effective vaccine that can be manufactured to scale.”
The candidate vaccine is expected to enter clinical trials in the second half of 2020 and be available in the second half of 2021.
