Sanofi coronavirus vaccine will be priced below €10 – France chief

A coronavirus vaccine being developed by Sanofi in partnership with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline is expected to be priced at less than €10 ($11.80) per shot if it is approved for use, according to Sanofi’s chief in France.

“The price is not totally set … We are assessing production costs for the coming months … We will be below 10 euros,” Olivier Bogillot told France Inter radio on Saturday.

Drugmakers and government agencies across the world are racing to develop vaccines and treatments for the new coronavirus (COVID-19), which causes respiratory diseases, killing more than 879,000 worldwide and wrecked economies.

When asked about rival AstraZeneca, which is likely to price its shot at about €2.50 in Europe, Bogillot said: “The price gap for us can be that we use all our internal resources, our own researchers, our own research centres. AstraZeneca outsources part of its production.”

In an emailed statement on Sunday, a Sanofi spokeswoman said that a final price would only be determined when the vaccine reaches its final testing stage.

“We anticipate being able to determine a final price at the time of our Phase III trials, when we know more about dosing. At this stage, any figure is imprecise. Less than 10 euros is only one of the hypotheses we are working on.” the spokeswomen added.

Earlier this week, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline said they had started a clinical trial of their protein-based coronavirus vaccine candidate, aiming to reach the final testing stage, also known as Phase III, by December.

If the results are positive, the two drugmakers hope to obtain the vaccine approved in the first half of next year.

Sanofi is also working on another coronavirus vaccine candidate in partnership with U.S group Translate Bio that will adopt another technology known as messenger RNA.