The British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca expects to be able to market two billion doses of the vaccine to the coronavirus in September if ongoing research reports positive results from the company’s CEO.
The company is partnering with the University of Oxford, which has led clinical trials on the drug. It is already in production but the approval of the Agency is pending before it is placed on the market. Research is expected to be completed in the coming months.
So far we are on the right track and production is about to begin, but we must be ready for it as soon as results are available, says AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot in an interview with the BBC .
He says that in August or September it will be available whether the vaccine is active or not.
The company announced earlier this week that it has reached an agreement with the Gavi Vaccination Alliance, CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation), a corporate and government partner for anti-epidemic preparedness and the Serum Institute of India to double its production capacity of COV 19 – the vaccine – in two billion doses.
The agreement with Serum, one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers, will ensure that sufficient supplies are available for the world’s poorest countries.
AstraZeneca is already collaborating on the vaccine production for Europe and the United States and is currently preparing for production in China as well as in India.
Pascal Soriot says AstraZeneca, which performs this job without a profit in mind, could lose high sums in the experiment if clinical trials indicate that the drug is not effective in the COVID-19 battle. Financial risks are spread by organizations such as CEPI.
The University of Oxford began researching the vaccine with the help of hundreds of volunteers in April and will now be expanded to 10,000 participants.
