Sanofi, GSK announce delay in Covid vaccine until end of 2021
France-based Sanofi and Britain’s GSK have announced on Friday that their coronavirus vaccines will face a delay and will be available until the end of 2021 after temporary results had shown a low immune response in older people.
The announcement from the companies is a huge setback in efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
The companies said the delay in their adjuvanted recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine programme was to “improve immune response in older adults.”
The vaccine’s potential availability had been pushed back “from mid-2021 to Q4 2021,” they said in a statement.
Meanwhile, American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have said their vaccine had proven 90 percent effectiveness in curtailing coronavirus infections in ongoing Phase 3 trials involving more than 40,000 people.
On Thursday, US experts voted to recommend granting emergency approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the move will pave the way for America to become the next country to go ahead with mass immunisation after the UK. Canada, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.
