Washington to support GSK and Sanofi Covid-19 vaccine with $2.1bn

GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi have inked an agreement with the US government to speed up development and manufacturing of their Covid-19 vaccine candidate at scale.

Washington will provide up to $2.1bn under the aegis of the Trump administration's Warp Speed operation, with more than half of the monies to be funnelled into support for developing the vaccine and to finance the clinical trials needed.

The remainder of the funds will be used to scale up manufacturing facilities and to deliver an initial batch of 100.0m doses with a long-term option for a further 500.0m doses.

"The global need for a vaccine to help prevent COVID-19 is massive, and no single vaccine or company will be able to meet the global demand alone," said Thomas Triomphe, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Sanofi Pasteur.

For his part, Roger Connor, President of GSK Vaccines, thanked the US government for the financing and said: "GSK is proud to be working in partnership with Sanofi to make this vaccine available at scale as soon as possible.

"We thank the U.S. government for playing a very important role in providing early, significant funding to enable the development and scale-up of this potentially important vaccine."