CureVac rejects reports of White House takeover offer for COVID-19 vaccine

CureVac has rejected a report at the weekend that the White House had offered to buy out the German-US biotechnology outfit that is developing a possible vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus.

In a conference call with journalists, the company did however confirm that it was working with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other agencies in America, such as the National Institutes of Health.

It was also in talks with the German government.

But an executive from the company indicated that the report from Welt am Sonntag was not correct, with another saying the firm "did not know" where such information had originated from and therefore could not comment on the reports.

The newspaper, which cited an anonymous source within the German government, said that the White House was pushing for exclusive access to the supply of the vaccine.

CureVac also said it had received no such approach, although it did not know if other conversations might have taken place in the background that it was unaware of.

Two senior American officials had told the New York Times on Sunday that some of the German news accounts first reporting the story were overblown, particularly with regards to any effort by the United States "to secure exclusive access to a vaccine".

And one German official told the NYT it was not clear if the US was just seeking access to the coronavirus research and for production to be conducted on American soil.

A Coronavirus vaccine may be possible by autumn

On Tuesday evening, European Commission chief, Ursula Von der Leyen, said that the European Commission would do everything in its power to try and develop a vaccine by autumn 2020.

Typically, experts say that a normal timeline for developing a vaccine is more on the order of a year or a year and a half.

Von der Leyen, however, believed that timeline could potentially be reduced in half or two-thirds by accelerating the bureaucratic processes involved, AFP reported.

She referred specifically to a company "that other countries want to buy out, meaning that it is the leader", reportedly adding that the company believed that it might be possible to develop the vaccine by autumn.