European Commission Secures Access To 300Mln Doses Of Potential COVID-19 Vaccine

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 01st August, 2020) The European Commission said on Friday it had completed talks with the pharmaceutical partnership of France's Sanofi and UK's GSK, paving the way for an Advance Purchase Agreement on 300 million doses of their candidate coronavirus vaccine.

The Sanofi-GSK vaccine has already signed early purchase contracts with the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom.

"The European Commission has concluded exploratory talks with a pharmaceutical company to purchase a potential vaccine against COVID-19. The envisaged contract with Sanofi-GSK would provide for an option for all EU Member States to purchase the vaccine. It is envisaged that, once a vaccine has proven to be safe and effective against COVID-19, the Commission would have a contractual framework in place for the purchase of 300 million doses, on behalf of all EU Member States," the press release said.

The commission said it would also continue intensive discussions with other vaccine manufacturers.

The Sanofi-GSK vaccine is a combined product of the recombinant protein-based technology used by Sanofi for an influenza vaccine and GSK's established pandemic adjuvant technology. The candidate vaccine is now underway with the third out of three required phases of clinical trials.

Earlier in the day, Sanofi-GSK announced reaching a deal with the US government to receive up to$2.1 billion in funding under the latter's Operation Warp Speed for an early supply of 100 million doses of the potential vaccine and an additional delivery of 500 million doses longer term.

The UK government, in turn, secured early access to 60 million Sanofi-GSK candidate vaccines on Wednesday.