It becomes the sixth vaccine authorized in the EU. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Thursday approved the coronavirus vaccine from Franco-Austrian biotech Valneva. It becomes the new anti-Covid vaccine recommended for adults in the 27 countries of the European Union. Nantes-based company Valneva is developing an inactivated virus vaccine, a more traditional technology than messenger RNA. This is also one of the arguments put forward by the laboratory, which believes that this vaccine could convince people who have not yet been vaccinated.
“The EMA has recommended the granting of a marketing authorization for the vaccine” Valneva for people “between the ages of 18 and 50,” the European regulator said in a statement. “After a thorough assessment, the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has concluded by consensus that the data on the vaccine are robust and meet EU criteria for efficacy, safety and efficacy. quality,” he added.
A call for more orders
Valneva has multiplied the disappointments for this vaccine: in September 2021, the British government, which had placed an order for 100 million doses, terminated its contract, a disappointment for the company which had caused its stock price to fall. In May, it was the turn of the European Union, with which Valneva had an agreement for 60 million doses by 2023, to let it be known that it was considering terminating this order, in a context of significant global production.
In response, Valneva has proposed a plan to try to remedy the situation in an acceptable way and which the European Commission must consider. Umpteenth episode in this soap opera: last Friday, the biotech called for more orders from European countries for its vaccine in order to be able to maintain this contract. Five other vaccines have been approved in the European Union: messenger RNA vaccines from the American groups Pfizer and Moderna, those from the Swedish-British laboratory AstraZeneca and its American competitor Johnson & Johnson, which use a viral vector, and the Novavax vaccine.