French drug company says US will get first dibs on COVID-19 vaccine

Sanofi, the French drug company working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop a coronavirus vaccine, indicated that Americans will be the first to gain access to the vaccine should the company be successful.

“The U.S. government has the right to the largest pre-order because it’s invested in taking the risk,” Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson told Bloomberg.

HHS announced in February that its Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) will provide “expertise and reallocated funds” to Sanofi to develop the vaccine. 

Hudson said the U.S. expects “that if we’ve helped you manufacture the doses at risk, we expect to get the doses first.”

BARDA has given $30 million to Sanofi so far, according to Bloomberg. 

Sanofi also partnered with British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline on the project and says it could make 600 million doses annually, though Hudson aims to double that projection. 

Hudson warned that European countries could be left behind if they don’t put in more resources toward vaccine development. 

“I’ve been campaigning in Europe to say the U.S. will get vaccines first,” Hudson told Bloomberg from his home in Paris. “That’s how it will be because they’ve invested to try and protect their population, to restart their economy.”

The Trump administration is pushing to speed up the development of vaccines through a program dubbed “Operation Warp Speed,” seeking to have millions of doses ready by January, an ambitious timeline that would be significantly faster than any previous vaccine development.

Hudson told Bloomberg that Sanofi plans to begin human trials in the second half of this year and aim to have a vaccine available by the second half of 2021.

On Tuesday the American biotechnology company Moderna announced that the Food and Drug Administration has given them fast-track designation, which is designed to expedite the development of treatments for life-threatening diseases such as COVID-19.