Sanofi has agreed to produce millions of doses of BioNTech and Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine in an unusual collaboration to speed vaccination efforts, reported Bloomberg.
The French drugmaker will give BioNTech access to a production facility in Frankfurt, which will start to deliver doses this summer, Sanofi said in a statement Wednesday, January 27. The deal will produce more than 125 million doses of the messenger RNA vaccine for the European Union.
Sanofi’s own effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine has stumbled, meaning it won’t be ready by summer as initially expected. The deal with BioNTech allows Europe to make up for some of the loss. The pact also raised hopes that more pharma giants would throw their manufacturing and distribution weight behind the few coronavirus shots that have proved effective.
“Sanofi’s move certainly suggests this is possible,” said Sam Fazeli, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, citing vaccines under development by Valneva and Novavax as products that could benefit from such industrial firepower.
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