French drug giant to give U.S. priority on vaccine
Country’s investment in firm’s research puts it at the front of the line
Americans will likely get Sanofi’s COVID-19 vaccine before the rest of the world if the French pharmaceutical giant can successfully deliver one.
That’s because the U.S. was first in line to fund Sanofi’s vaccine research, chief executive officer Paul Hudson said in an interview with Bloomberg News. He warned that Europe risks falling behind unless it steps up efforts to seek protection against a pandemic that’s killed more than 290,000 people worldwide.
“The U.S. government has the right to the largest preorder because it’s invested in taking the risk,” Hudson said. The U.S., which expanded a vaccine partnership with the company in February, expects “that if we’ve helped you manufacture the doses at risk, we expect to get the doses first.”
Sanofi is one of the biggest players among the dozens of companies seeking a vaccine, which is needed to reboot economies after a lockdown-induced plunge in output.
It has partnered with U.K. rival GlaxoSmithKline Plc on the project supported by the U.S. and says it could make 600 million doses annually — a capacity that Hudson said he aims to double. Governments around the world are launching funding drives and research efforts, including the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed,” which resembles a program at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Health advocates have warned that the race could leave out countries that can’t afford protective doses, making them vulnerable to mass fatalities and economic wreckage from new waves of the virus.
While French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spearheaded an $8-billion (U.S.) fund drive to support equitable distribution, others have raised the prospect of a pecking order based on national support for research. Supplies of an experimental shot from the University of Oxford will be prioritized for the U.K. before other parts of the world, according to Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca Plc, which will make the vaccine.
Many vaccine projects aim to deliver shots in 2021, with some targeting limited availability for health-care workers and other vulnerable groups as early as this fall.