In his surprise speech on Tuesday evening, the President of the Republic stressed that "four French sites" will produce valuable vaccines against Covid "from the end of February".
Anxious to move quickly on the crucial question of the availability of doses, Emmanuel Macron somewhat shortened the deadlines, especially since, among the four, is the Sanofi plant in Marcy-l'Etoile, near Lyon (Rhône ).
However, the vaccine of the French giant has taken a long time to come and is not expected before the end of 2021.
For three other manufacturers, on the other hand, who have been preparing for several months, it is soon the start.
It is in Monts, near Tours (Indre-et-Loire), in a unit of Recipharm, that the first hexagonal doses will be produced on behalf of Moderna.
It will be "the first fortnight of March", specifies the cabinet of the Minister of Industry, Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
The American company, headquartered in Cambridge (United States) and which has no production capacity, has forged partnerships with several manufacturers.
In Europe, the Swiss Lonza, one of the world leaders in pharmaceutical subcontracting, supplies, under its control, the raw material based on messenger RNA, in the form of a liquid solution.
It is delivered in frozen bags at -80 ° C to other players, such as the Swedish company Recipharm, who take care of the “fill and finish”, the phase of assembling and filling the bottles. , with a capacity of ten doses for Moderna.
Increase cadences
From mid-April, it is the French Delpharm who will enter the track, on behalf of BioNTech this time.
The German biotech, based in Mainz, has a solid industrial partner with Pfizer - whose plant in Puurs, Belgium, supplies all of Europe - but has, for its part, sought partners to increase production rates.
It is in Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre (Eure-et-Loir) that the bottles provided for five doses (but actually containing six), will be filled.
Another French player who will soon play a leading role in the vaccination campaign, the family group Fareva, which will operate for CureVac, on two of its sites, in Val-de-Reuil (Eure) and Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) .
However, he will have to wait until the green light from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) which could intervene in May.
"But we will be ready beforehand," underlines Bernard Fraisse, president and founder of Fareva.
Each site will have a state-of-the-art line.
There, we are recovering the freezers and the last tools.
"
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The German biotech, headquartered in Tübingen, has also worked on messenger RNA which involves storage at -80 ° C.
"But the 20-dose vials can stay three months between 2 and 8 ° C", specifies Bernard Fraisse who does not hide that the discussions on the capacities are going well.
“We are always asked for more.
"Fareva will be able to supply 20 million doses in 2021 and 35 million in 2022." And if necessary, from 2022, we will be able to use the Riom site (Puy-de-Dôme) that we have just bought “, Predicts the boss of Fareva.
Will the doses produced on French soil remain in France?
"It is not our responsibility, but the labels will tell us, if they are in German, for example", smiles Bernard Fraisse.
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These doses made in France will help loosen the grip of vaccination while in parallel, Pfizer and AstraZeneca will, over the weeks, increase their capacities.
"The phase of
scale-up
(
ramp-up
), it takes time, said Patrick Biecheler, senior partner in charge of the pharmacy at Roland Berger.
With the Covid, we are on quantities of vaccine much greater than what we usually know.
"