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Vaccine – Better late than never. French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi on Wednesday, February 23, announced widespread positive results for the vaccine against Covid, developed by British company GSK, a project that ends after about a year after multiple delays.
“Sanofi and GSK will seek regulatory approval for a vaccine against () Covid-19” in the United States and the European Union, the two groups announced in a press release.
Laboratories, which have not yet announced the studies on which these findings are based, report that this vaccine has been shown to be effective in avoiding any hospitalizations associated with Covid-19.
Compared to the efficacy of already available vaccines.
They also reported an efficacy of just over 50% against all symptomatic infections.
This is “similar to the efficacy of vaccines already available,” Sanofi stressed, in a context where all current vaccines have lost efficacy against contamination over time, particularly since the Omicron variant spiked at the end of 2021.
This announcement, which paves the way for an upcoming launch on condition of a green light from health authorities, is the culmination of a long line for Sanofi, which has recorded several setbacks in its Covid vaccine projects.
The French group had to twice postpone its schedule for this vaccine, which it had originally hoped to provide before mid-2021. It was initially delayed by six months, due to a dosage problem, and then further delayed due to difficulties in finding people who had never been infected for a procedure Trusted experiences.
Abandoned RNA Vaccine Project
Sanofi has also abandoned another anti-Covid vaccine project, based on messenger RNA technology such as those developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, which is already at the center of vaccination campaigns in many Western countries.
As for the vaccine that the French group is focusing on now, it uses a slightly less innovative technology, based on recombinant protein. This is also the case with the US Novavax vaccine, which will begin distribution in France.
The Ministry of Health said on Tuesday that the first injections of this vaccine, offered as an alternative to those who fear the RNA vaccine, are scheduled for early March.
The first batch, about 1.1 million doses, is expected to arrive in France in the coming days – “says the laboratory on February 23, 24 or 25” – the ministry specifies during its weekly update of the Covid vaccination campaign.
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