US to pay $2.1 billion to Sanofi, GSK, in COVID-19 vaccine deal
Washington
The US government will pay $2.1 billion to Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline Plc for COV- ID-19 vaccines to cover 50 mil- lion people and to underwrite the drug makers’ testing and manufacturing, the companies said yesterday.
The award is the biggest yet from ‘Operation Warp Speed’, the White House initiative aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments to fight COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The deal, announced by the US Department of Health and Human Services and Depart- ment of Defence, works out at a cost of around $42 per person inoculated.
That is almost identical to the $40 per patient the US agreed to pay Pfizer Inc and BioNTech when it inked a nearly $2 billion deal for 50 m courses of that potential vaccine last week.
The Sanofi-GSK deal is for 100 m doses, at two per person, and gives the government an option to purchase an additional 500 m doses at an unspecified price. Sanofi and GSK plan to start clinical trials for the vaccine in September.
Sanofi executive Clement Lewin said the companies had not yet agreed with the government on a specific price for the additional doses.
GSK said in a statement that more than half of the total funding will go into further development of the vaccine, including clinical trials, with the remainder used for a manufacturing rampup and delivery of doses.
The two companies’ inoculation is combination of a vaccine
based on Sanofi’s flu shots and a complementary technology
from GSK called an adjuvant, designed to improve the vaccine’s potency.
Sanofi will receive the bulk of the proceeds from the deal.
It marks the second contract for the Franco-British pair’s vaccine candidate after they agreed earlier this week to supply 60 million doses to the British government.
Reuters reported last week that Pfizer’s deal was expected to set a pricing benchmark for future deals between drugmakers and governments.
Moderna Inc and Pfizer began two 30,000-subject trials of COVID-19 vaccines on Monday that could clear the way for regulatory approval and use by the end of 2020.
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