December 11th – France’s Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline of the United Kingdom said on the 11th that the launch and distribution of the vaccine will be postponed to the end of 2021 considering that the interim results of the novel coronavirus vaccine they have shown low immune response to the elderly.
According to AFP and other media reports on the 11th, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline said that the postponement of their coronavirus vaccine project is to “improve the immune response of the vaccine to the elderly”. “
The interim results of the study show that adults aged 18 to 49 have the same immune response as thos of COVID-19 recovery, but the immune response of the elderly (over 50 years old) is lower, which may be due to insufficient antigen concentrations,” they said in a statement. Therefore, the potential availability of this vaccine has been postponed from mid-2021 to the fourth quarter of 2021.
“We are very concerned about public health, which is why we are disappointed with today’s announcement of a postponement, but all of our decisions are driven by science and data,” Sanofi’s executive vice president and head said.
The president of GlaxoSmithKline Vaccine also mentioned that “the results of the study are not the same as we hoped.”
AFP noted that the statements of the two European pharmaceutical giants were a huge setback in efforts to combat the coronavirus epidemic. The two companies plan to start the second phase of research in February 2021.
If the data are positive, the third phase of the global study may start in the second quarter of 2021.
