COVID-19: CureVac, Bayer ink agreement to produce 'hundreds of doses' of vaccine

German pharmaceutical firms Bayer and CureVac on January 6 announced that they have joined forces in the development of CureVac's Covid-19 vaccine candidate. In a joint statement, they revealed that CureVac would now use Bayer expertise and established infrastructure to develop a successful vaccine against coronavirus. CureVac began the final phase trials of its vaccine candidate CVnCoV in mid-December, involving more than 35,000 volunteers in Europe and Latin America. 

“We are very happy to join forces with Bayer, whose expertise and infrastructure will help us make our vaccine candidate CVnCoV even more rapidly available to as many people as possible. Building on the positive data we have seen so far with CVnCoV, we now also have another strong partner on our side to get the vaccine to the people who need it following the receipt of the requisite regulatory approvals,” said Dr. Franz-Werner Haas, Chief Executive Officer of CureVac.

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Bayer would provide access to markets 

As per the deal, Bayer would aid CureVac to gain country operations within the European Union (EU) and other additional markets. Both the companies are now aiming to supply hundreds of vaccine doses in and outside Germany if the vaccine gets approved by the European Commission. “Together both companies aim to play a meaningful role to contribute to stopping the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement clarified.

Meanwhile, experts and politicians have slammed Germany for not buying enough doses of Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to roll out its immunisation programme. Germany, which recently reported the presence of mutant coronavirus, is a part of EU’s vaccine procurement scheme and is reliant on the bloc’s regulators for granting authorization of the vaccine to prevent COVID-19 infection. Currently, only Pfizer/BioNTech jabs, domestically produced by Germany, are allowed across the bloc.

According to the latest tally by John Hopkins University, Germany has reported over 1851848 cases of coronavirus out of whom 37,837 people have lost their lives. While China where the pandemic allegedly emerged has revived its economy to a large extent, it is the US which remains primarily affected. Now, with multiple vaccine candidates getting approval, the world is expecting the catastrophic crisis to end soon. 

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