No doubt soon authorized in Europe, will the anti-Covid vaccine CureVac live up to the hopes that European countries - and in the first place France - place in it?
Maybe not.
"We no longer receive the materials we need all the time," the boss of the German biopharmaceutical company, Franz-Werner Haas, told Der Spiegel on Tuesday, adding that these components were blocked elsewhere. Atlantic.
His group lives "from day to day" and struggles to constitute "a large stock", recognizes the one who has been at the head since August 2020.
On February 12, the European Medicines Agency opened a continuous review procedure for this vaccine.
This means that the data on its effectiveness and safety are analyzed now, before a decision expected in the coming weeks.
Read also Covid: how Pfizer became the flagship of vaccination in France
The main advantage of CureVac is that it works on messenger RNA technology, like two vaccines already authorized in Europe: Pfizer (the most used) and Moderna.
This revolutionary method for a vaccine manufactured on such a scale offers strong guarantees both on the effectiveness of the product (over 95% for Pfizer) and on the low risk of adverse effects.
"We will have to remain vigilant"
It is difficult to say, for the moment, whether the industrial difficulties encountered by CureVac could impact the delivery schedule expected by Europe.
France, for example, plans to receive 44 million doses in the second half of the year, according to the latest schedule transmitted by the government on Tuesday.
At the beginning of January, deliveries were expected to begin in March with 8 million doses received during the first half of the year.
There will be "no impact on the start of production" but "it will be necessary to remain vigilant on the capacity to increase the production then", recognized the government, passing the buck to CureVac.
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Several French industrial sites are supposed to participate in the bottling of this vaccine, in particular those of the Fareva group. Provided that the materials developed in the United States and essential for its composition arrive in sufficient quantity.
