By Michael Erman and Carl O’Donnell
July 31 (Reuters) – The United States government will pay $ 2.1 billion to Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc for COVID-19 vaccines to cover 50 million people and to undergo testing and manufacturing by the manufacturers of medications, the companies said Friday.
The award is the largest of ‘Operation Warp Speed’, the White House initiative aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments to combat COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus.
The settlement, announced by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense, costs around $ 42 per inoculated person.
That’s almost identical to the $ 40 per patient that the United States agreed to pay Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE when they signed a nearly $ 2 billion agreement for 50 million courses of that potential vaccine last week.
The Sanofi-GSK agreement is for 100 million doses, two per person, and gives the government the option to buy an additional 500 million doses at an unspecified price. Sanofi and GSK plan to start clinical trials for the vaccine in September.
Sanofi executive Clement Lewin said the companies had not yet agreed with the government on a specific price for the additional doses.
GSK said in a statement that more than half of the total funding will go towards further development of the vaccine, including clinical trials, with the remainder going to be used for increased manufacturing and dose delivery.
The inoculation of the two companies is a combination of a vaccine based on Sanofi’s flu vaccines and a complementary GSK technology called an adjuvant, designed to improve the potency of the vaccine.
Sanofi will receive most of the proceeds from the deal.
It marks the second contract for the Franco-British couple’s vaccine candidate after they agreed earlier this week to supply 60 million doses to the British government.
Reuters reported last week that the Pfizer deal was expected to set a price benchmark for future deals between drug manufacturers and governments.
Moderna Inc and Pfizer began two trials of 30,000 COVID-19 vaccine subjects on Monday that could open the way for regulatory approval and use by the end of 2020. (Additional report by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Peter Henderson, Grant McCool edition and Jan Harvey)
