Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Bayer AG has agreed to produce Experimental CureVac NV vaccine against coronavirus to boost the launch of a promising injection as European Union governments tour for additional supplies to spur an arduous campaign.
The change will not have an immediate effect, although it is at least good news for Europe after a week of chaos around its program. The controversy increased after the European Commission threatened to restrict vaccine exports – generating global anger – in response to news that AstraZeneca Plc would not meet delivery targets.
Bayer’s production effort extends its current CureVac pact on regulatory release and global distribution, and will begin shipping later this year. Follows commitments from other European pharmaceutical giants Sanofi and Novartis AG will put its expanding manufacturing capabilities from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s Covid-19 injection.
Large pharmaceutical companies have the ability to increase the supply that smaller developers lack, and companies are also under pressure to help, as new variants threaten the effectiveness of existing vaccines. Vaccines appear to offer the only way out of the pandemic, which has killed more than 2.2 million people worldwide.
“We will need vaccines beyond the summer,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn told a news conference on Monday. “It is possible that due to mutations that we cannot yet predict today, vaccines have to be adjusted and changed. MRNA technology makes it possible to do this relatively quickly. “
Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold talks on the crisis with pharmaceutical executives, German regional leaders and European Commission officials on Monday. The Berlin video call comes after Ursula von der Leyen, the committee’s chairman, announced that Astra will deliver 9 million additional doses of vaccines to the EU in the first quarter.
The commission is expected to double on Monday that a vaccination target of 70% of Europeans by the summer is achievable, but only if the drug manufacturers live up to their promised commitments, according to an official familiar with the matter.
The Astra disaster highlights how tenuous these commitments are. This triggered a crisis on January 22, when he said that problems at a factory in Belgium would mean that dose deliveries this quarter would be significantly reduced.
The episode turned into a painful game of blaming the 27-nation EU against the pharmaceutical industry and sparked fears about a wave of vaccine nationalism that could hinder efforts to fight the pandemic.
How vaccine nationalism spreads with a shortage of supplies: QuickTake
Stefan Oelrich of Bayer, who heads the company’s pharmaceutical unit, said that negotiations with the German government had helped to convince him to consider producing a vaccine – although he had never done so before.
“We have the necessary capacity” thanks to experience in the manufacture of biotechnological products, said Oelrich. Bayer expects to be able to produce 160 million doses of the CureVac vaccine next year, taking advantage of its factory in Wuppertal, near Duesseldorf.
Bayer shares rose 1.1% on the Frankfurt floor.
The injection of CureVac is still being tested in a final testing phase, but Spahn said the shot could be approved as early as March. The product is a messenger RNA vaccine similar to that of the German company BioNTech – which has partnered with Pfizer – and Moderna Inc. These vaccines were the first to be approved in Europe and elsewhere, and have shown about 95% effectiveness in testing.
– With the help of Nikos Chrysoloras