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Sanofi failure could delay government vaccination plans

2020-12-15T07:55:34.973Z


AstraZeneca and Janssen, crucial now to achieve group immunity Novavax could add doses if it closes an agreement with Brussels


As in the story of the milkmaid, the Government of Pedro Sánchez recalls that it has bought 140 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, enough for all Spaniards and many more.

However, the reality is that at the moment it has only reserved products that are experimental and that can be left behind due to the difficulty of R&D.

Without going any further, on Friday it became known that

Sanofi,

on whose contract 31.5 million containers depend, has failed and is delaying its next attempt for six months, until the end of 2021.

It thus adds to the failure of the Australian

CSL

, who abandons the race.

The delay by Sanofi, in a joint initiative with GSK, may delay the implementation of the vaccine plans as it is one of the large contracts that the European Commission has signed for the supply of six candidates in the 27 Member States.

The rapid success of alternative paths from

Pfizer / BioNTech

and

Moderna

- with an efficiency of around 95% - can cause the mirage that all those that come after will equally shine.

But the facts are not that simple.

The doubts arose first with

AstraZeneca

, whose effectiveness of its main trial with the administration of two doses fell to 62%.

Behind came the failure of Sanofi, which verified that its product does not protect those over 55 years of age, announced that it would reinforce the antigen and resigned the approval date of the first semester.

The bump in the road is not small, since the French manufacturer is one of the largest in the sector, with an industrial capacity of 1 billion vials for Covid that are now disappearing.

At the moment, the government's vaccination plan depends exclusively on Pfizer, which will gradually deliver 21 million vials, and Moderna with another 8.4 million.

In both cases, two doses per person are needed.

It must be remembered that one of the great problems that these companies are going to encounter is the high demand from all countries in the world.

The Donald Trump government, for example, is negotiating with Pfizer a new shipment of 100 million doses for the second quarter, a deadline that the company does not know if it can meet and that it intends to deliver in the third quarter.

Salvador Illa, Minister of Health

, repeated yesterday that the Government has bought 140 million vaccines, enough to immunize 80 million people.

"There will be vaccines for everyone and they will be left over," he said, anticipating that

the first shipment from Pfizer is expected to arrive on January 4

, once the European Medicines Agency (EMA) gives its authorization.

Days later the same is expected with Moderna.

Neither companies nor Health have reported how many vaccines per month they expect to arrive in Spain.

Illa predicted this weekend in an interview that

70%

of Spaniards will be vaccinated at the end of summer, which would lead to achieving group immunity.

That

means vaccinating 32.7 million Spaniards

.

But that figure is contingent on new alternatives being approved and no manufacturing bottlenecks.

If Pfizer and Moderna hypothetically delivered proportionally each month, 22 million injections would have been administered by September to only 11 million Spaniards.

"The vaccination will be implemented as the vaccines arrive in Spain," respond health sources.

That percentage of 70% of immunized in summer will only be reached if, in addition to Pfizer and Moderna, those that should come later are successful.

In particular, all eyes are on

AstraZeneca

, whose preliminary results have not convinced and if its low efficacy is confirmed, it may take longer to achieve herd immunity.

At the moment, the British laboratory has not submitted the request for approval to the EMA, something that could happen in the coming weeks.

Deutsche Bank was already advancing that due to dependence on the British laboratory's solution, the EU could reach group immunity in the third quarter, one more delayed than in the US, where large supplies are expected from Pfizer and Moderna.

Equally important is that of

Janssen

(Johnson & Johnson group), since it is one of the large manufacturers, with an industrial capacity for 1,000 million vials, of which 21 correspond to Spain.

Its success would bring health plans closer to the herd immunization in summer, since initially it is the only laboratory that works with the hypothesis of a single injection.

Approval is expected in the first quarter, similar to

Novavax

, a laboratory that does not currently have a commercial agreement with the EU.

CureVac begins the last phase of its vaccine trials

One more step between the most advanced SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in time.

The biopharmaceutical company CureVac announced yesterday that it has begun phase III of its experimental product in which more than 35,000 volunteers participate, most of them in Europe and Latin America.

This is the last stage in human studies before receiving authorization.

It is an important step for the countries of the European Union, since this is one of the laboratories with which the European Commission maintains a supply contract if its product is successful.

Specifically, the Executive of Ursula von der Leyen has reserved 225 million doses (plus an additional 180 million), of which 23.6 million would correspond to Spain due to the proportional distribution of its population.

CureVac expects to have the first trial results by the end of the first quarter and its commercialization could arrive in the third quarter.

"We have achieved an important milestone for the development of our CVnCoV vaccine," said CureVac President Franz-Werner Haas of a vaccine that is based on messenger RNA.

This German laboratory has received aid from the German state and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in August.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-12-15

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