Covid-19: the European Medicines Agency authorizes the marketing of Valneva’s vaccine – Le Monde

Laboratory technicians work at the premises of Valneva, in Saint-Herblain, near Nantes, on February 3, 2021. DAVID VINCENT / AP This is the sixth vaccine against Covid-19 recommended for adults within the twenty-seven European Union countries. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved, Thursday, June 23, the vaccine against the coronavirus of the Franco-Austrian biotech Valneva. EMA has recommended the #COVID19vaccine developed by #Valneva for authorization in the 🇪🇺 in people from 18 to 50 y… https://t.co/Wdv3W9FBig— EMA_News (@EU Medicines Agency) the granting of a marketing authorization for the vaccine” from Valneva for people “aged 18 to 50 years old”, specified the European regulator in a press release. “After a thorough assessment, the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use concluded by consensus that the data on the vaccine were robust and met EU criteria for efficacy, safety and quality,” he added. The Franco-Austrian biotechnology company Valneva, based near Nantes, is developing an inactivated virus vaccine, a more traditional technology than that of messenger RNA. This is also one of the arguments put forward by the laboratory to promote its vaccine, which believes that the latter could convince people not yet vaccinated. Serial disappointments 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, which had caused the stock market price of the company to fall. In May 2022, 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 its 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. Nth episode in this soap opera: last Friday, the laboratory called for more orders for its vaccine from European countries 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 that of the American manufacturer Novavax, based on the principle of a recombinant protein. Read also: Article reserved for our Covid-19 subscribers: the contract between Valneva and the European Union threatened Le Monde with AFP