Covid-19 shot won’t be ready until late 2021, says GSK, Sanofi

LONDON: Drugmakers GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi said on Friday that their potential Covid-19 vaccine won’t be ready until late next year because they need to improve the shot’s effectiveness in older people.

The companies said early trials showed the vaccine produced an “insufficient” immune response in older adults, demonstrating the need to refine the product so it protects people of all ages. London-based GSK and Paris-based Sanofi, now expect the vaccine to be available in the fourth quarter of 2021.

“The results of the study are not as we hoped,’’ Roger Connor, president of GSK Vaccines, said in a statement.While researchers around the world are racing to develop Covid-19 vaccines, the setback announced by Sanofi and GSK shows the challenges scientists face as they try to condense a process that usually takes years into a matter of months. Researchers in Australia said Friday they were abandoning their own vaccine candidate because it produced false positive results to HIV tests.

Public health experts say several vaccines will be needed to end the pandemic, which has killed more than 1.5 million people worldwide, because of the challenges in rapidly producing and distributing enough doses to vaccinate billions of people.

A vaccine produced by US drugmaker Pfizer and German partner BioNTech has been authorised for widespread use in the UK and a handful of other countries. A US government advisory panel on Thursday endorsed use of the Pfizer vaccine, putting the country one step away from launching its own mass vaccination program.