The European Commission announced on Wednesday that it had reduced its order for the Valneva vaccine against Covid-19 to 1.25 million doses, a further disappointment for the Franco-Austrian biotech whose initial contract with the EU provided for up to 60 million doses. .
The Commission had signed an agreement with Valneva at the end of 2021 that provides for the possibility for Member States to buy almost 27 million doses of its inactivated vaccine in 2022, with an additional 33 million doses in 2023. But the Commission had announced in mid May of its intention to cancel this order, in a context of significant global production.
Finally, it announced on Wednesday a “modification of the initial agreement” that allows member states to buy 1.25 million doses of the vaccine, which was authorized in June in the EU for use as primary vaccination in adults aged 18 to 50 years. . VLA2001 is the sixth vaccine approved in Europe, but the first to use traditional inactivated virus technology. “Member states that want to access this vaccine will receive the doses they need in August and September,” the Commission said in a statement.
setbacks
Valneva biotech is the first French company to obtain approval for its Covid-19 vaccine. She believes this technology could win over people who have not yet been vaccinated because they are reluctant to use the new messenger RNA technology. But it multiplied the setbacks with its vaccine: in September 2021, the British government, which had ordered 100 million doses, terminated its contract, a disappointment for the company that had caused its share price to fall.
The vaccine, however, was approved in the UK in April. It is also authorized in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the only country where it is currently marketed, with a contract for one million doses. By mid-May, when the vaccine was not yet approved in the EU, the EU’s expressed intention to cancel its order had caused the share price to fall by almost 20%.
In response, Valneva had proposed a plan to remedy the situation in an acceptable manner. On June 10, the biotech requested more orders from European countries. He explained that for lack of enough interest, he might have to stop his show. “Valneva’s vaccine adds a new option to the EU’s broad portfolio of vaccines and (…) we are offering the possibility to member states that wish to offer it to their citizens,” said the European Commissioner for Health, Stella Kyriakides. “Increased vaccination and boosters will be crucial in the coming months to protect our citizens,” she added.
The other five vaccines approved in the EU are the messenger RNA vaccines from the US-German duo Pfizer-BioNTech (2.4 billion doses purchased or reserved) and the US group Moderna (460 million); those of the Swedish-British laboratory AstraZeneca (400 million) and its American competitor Johnson & Johnson (400 million), which use a viral vector; and the Novavax vaccine (200 million), based on so-called protein subunit technology, which has been used for decades.
Source: BFM TV
