Please register to access this content.
To continue viewing the content you love, please sign in or create a new account
Dismiss
This content is for our paying subscribers only

The world will need more than one COVID-19 vaccine: GSK

Drugmakers expect to start clinical trials for coronavirus vaccine later this year



A medical worker extracts a flu vaccine as an elderly woman waits to be vaccinated at the Ministry of Health in Asuncion, Paraguay, Tuesday, April 14, 2020. Health authorities are encouraging people over 60 to be vaccinated against the flu, also a respiratory disease, to reduce complications of those who might contact the new coronavirus.
Image Credit: AP

London: The world will need more than one COVID-19 vaccine so drug companies must partner in the race to develop the weapons to fight the novel coronavirus, GlaxoSmithKline Chief Executive Officer Emma Walmsley said on Wednesday.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Sanofi SA said on Tuesday they would develop a vaccine to fight the fast-spreading coronavirus.

The drugmakers said they expect to start clinical trials for the vaccine in the second half of this year. If successful, the vaccine would be available in the second half of 2021.

Walmsley said GSK’s partnership with Sanofi brings scale to the attempt to get a COVID-19 vaccine but that there was still an enormous amount of work to do.

“The world’s going to definitely need more than one vaccine when you think about demand in this hugely challenged global health crisis,” she told BBC Radio.

Advertisement

The adjuvanted vaccine will be developed by combining Sanofi’s S-protein COVID-19 antigen and GSK’s pandemic adjuvant technology.

“It normally takes a decade, sometimes even more, to develop a vaccine but obviously we are in an unprecedented situation, the need is incredibly urgent. We are partnering with regulators to try and go as fast as we safely can.”

Advertisement