As Europe struggles with a shortage of vaccines, the UK has begun producing up to 60 million doses of a new COVID vaccine – on its home lawn.
French biotechnology company Valneva will start producing its experimental COVID at a plant in Livingston, Scotland, before testing and regulatory approval, the government announced on Thursday.
“Starting production, we will start deploying them as soon as possible to protect the British public if it receives regulatory approval,” said business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock told TWTR on Twitter
On Thursday, the Valneva vaccine “will be another vital tool in our fight against the virus if approved.”
The news comes as the European Union faces increasing pressure on the speed of its inoculation program, which has been exacerbated by pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca UK: AZN
and Pfizer PFE
both announcing delays in the delivery of their vaccines due to production problems at European factories.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn said the country may face a shortage of vaccines by April, as it called for a vaccination summit involving pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers and politicians to look for ways to speed up vaccination. block launch.
“We will still have at least 10 hard weeks with a shortage,” he said in a statement tweet on Thursday.
His comments come when the German vaccine committee recommended the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine only for those aged 18 to 64, according to reports from the wire services.
Meanwhile, health authorities in Madrid said on Wednesday that they had suspended COVID vaccinations this week and next, while remaining without fire.
“Unfortunately, as we suspected, the pace of deliveries was disrupted,” Deputy Regional Vice President of Madrid Ignacio Aguado told reporters, adding that the region had vaccinated 180,000 people since the campaign began.
Instead, more than 7.1 million people in the UK now have at least one dose of either the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed in conjunction with Oxford University, or the picture taken by German biotechnology BioNTech XE: 22UA
and its American partner Pfizer UK: 0Q1N.
The government, which has set a target of having 15 million of its most vulnerable citizens inoculated by mid-February, has provided early access to 367 million doses of seven vaccines, including one made by modern American biotechnology MRNA..
EU, which signed an agreement with AstraZeneca AZN
in August for 300 million doses, with an option for another 100 million, now calls on the UK-Sweden drug company to divert supply of COVID-19 vaccine from UK factories to address the shortage.
Read: EU calls for access to UK-produced AstraZeneca vaccines as shortages intensify
The two sides met late Wednesday, during which AstraZeneca’s chief executive Pascal Soriot pledged to work with the EU to resolve the issue.
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“We have engaged in even closer coordination to jointly establish a pathway for the administration of our vaccine in the coming months, as we continue our efforts to bring this vaccine to millions of Europeans without any profit during the pandemic.”
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“We had a constructive and open conversation about the complexity of increasing vaccine production and the challenges we faced,” said an AstraZeneca spokesman. “We have engaged in even closer coordination to jointly establish a pathway for the administration of our vaccine in the coming months, as we continue our efforts to bring this vaccine to millions of Europeans without any profit during the pandemic.”
EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in a tweet on Wednesday that the 27-member bloc regretted the “continuing lack of clarity” on the delivery schedule.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford shot was expected to be authorized for emergency use in the EU on Friday.
Shares of AstraZeneca were down 1.74% on trading in London on Thursday morning.
The meeting between the EU and AstraZeneca took place just hours after the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi FR: SAN
said it will team up with BioNTech UK: 0A3M
and Pfizer will produce up to 125 million doses of their COVID vaccine.
Valneva develops an inactivated, whole-virus vaccine, a more traditional approach than BioNTech BNTX
and Pfizer, which uses the so-called RNA messenger or mRNA approach, which sends a message to cells telling them to create proteins that can generate an immune response.
Read: The new candidate for the COVID-19 Valneva vaccine begins clinical trials
The French vaccine company’s candidate is currently in Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials, involving 150 volunteers in locations in Bristol, Birmingham, Southampton and Newcastle, to assess the safety of the experimental photograph and whether it has produced an immune response. healthy adults.
If successful, Valneva will conduct a larger study in April 2021, with more than 4,000 volunteers testing two doses of the vaccine in two groups: those aged 18-65 and those over 65. The vaccine candidate could become available by the fourth quarter of 2021.
“We believe that our vaccine, assuming successful development, can make a major contribution to the UK and beyond,” Valneva CEO Thomas Lingelbach said on Thursday.