France pledges funding UK begins coronavirus vaccine trial

French government anunced more than 800 million euros ($890 million) in investment Tuesday as part of worldwide race to find an effective vaccine.

French President Emmanuel Macron visited a Safi lab Tuesday alongside CEO Paul Hudson and anunced 200 million euros in government investments to reduce France's dependence on or countries for vaccines and or medicines.

Macron said France will relocalize production of some drugs as part of broer government efforts to revive virus-battered ecomy and bring more manufacturing production back to France.

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Last month, Safi prompted outr in France by promising to give United States first access to company's eventual vaccine, because U.S. h invested more in its research. Safi later backtracked and said it would be available in all countries.

Macron has pushed for vaccines to be considered a common good for humanity that must t be subject to market pressures.

Imperial vaccine uses syntic strands of genetic code based on virus. Once injected into muscle, body's own cells are instructed to make copies of a spiky protein on coronavirus. That should, in turn, trigger an immune response so body can fight off any future COVID-19 infection.

Dr. Doug Brown, chief executive of British Society for Immulogy, said techlogy used by Imperial College London should oretically le to long-term immunity against coronavirus but w needs to go through rigorous testing. He was t linked to trial.

Oxford University recently began an vanced study involving 10,000 volunteers, and U.S. is preparing for even larger studies in July that involve 30,000 people each testing different candidates, including Oxford's and one me by National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc.

Scientists have never created vaccines from scratch this fast and it's far from clear that any will ultimately prove safe and effective. Still, numerous countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Nerlands and U.S., have alrey placed vance orders for millions of vaccines.

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Shattock said Imperial vaccine, if effective, would t be licensed to any particular pharmaceutical, but various manufacturing partners around world would be given permission to produce it as part of a social business that does t make any profits.

We can't provide it at cost because it takes money to make, he said. We'll provide it at cost of goods with a small percent and that small percent will vary depending on ecomic status of country. World Health Organization ted Monday about 100,000 new infections have been reported every day for past two weeks and that relaxed lockdown restrictions in many countries have led to a new surge of cases.

(Im courtesy - AP)