Four-Country Inclusive Vaccine Alliance Concludes Agreement with AstraZeneca for Supply of Possibly 400 Million Covid-19 Vaccines
- 15/06/2020
- Articles
The government of The Netherlands announced on 13 June 2020 that the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance (IVA) entered into a cooperation agreement with AstraZeneca for the supply of a possible vaccine against Covid-19 (see, attached letter to lower house of Parliament of Hugo de Jonge, the Dutch Minister for Public Health, Wellbeing and Sports and press-release). The IVA is a joint initiative of France, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands to secure a Covid-19 vaccine for the European Union and other countries as quickly as possible (see, Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News Alert of 4 June 2020).
The vaccine is still being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. A clinical trial involving 10,000 test persons has just begun. A further trial involving 30,000 participants is scheduled to start at the end of June 2020. If the tests are successful and if the vaccine obtains a marketing authorisation from the European Medicines Agency, Minister de Jonge maintains that a first batch of vaccines might be available at the end of 2020. While the vaccine is under development and the outcome of this venture is still uncertain, the production of the vaccine is already in its preparatory stages.
The agreement with AstraZeneca provides for the initial supply of 300 million vaccines and a possible additional supply of 100 million doses. It is apparently not exclusive and the IVA will continue to talk with other vaccine developers as well.
