Glaxo To Fill About 60M Novavax COVID-19 Shots For Britain

GlaxoSmithKline Plc GSK has agreed to handle the final part of the manufacturing process for up to 60 million doses of Novavax Inc’s NVAX COVID-19 vaccine for use in the U.K.

• GSK will provide ‘fill and finish’ manufacturing capacity at its Barnard Castle facility in the North East of England beginning as early as May.
• A detailed agreement with Novavax and the U.K. government’s Vaccines Taskforce has yet to be signed, it added.
• Britain struck a deal to buy 60 million doses of Novavax’s vaccine candidate last August.
• Novavax will manufacture some of the vaccines using Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies facilities in Stockton-on-Tees, northern England.
• GSK and partner Sanofi suffered a development setback in December, delaying the planned launch of their jointly developed vaccine. In February, the companies started a Phase 2 study of their adjuvanted recombinant protein COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
• GSK also agreed to collaborate on production and vaccine development with Germany’s CureVac.
• Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine is 96% effective in preventing cases caused by the original version of the coronavirus in a trial in Britain and 86% effective in protecting against the more contagious B117 variant.
• Price Action: GSK shares are trading 0.04% higher at $36.69, while NVAX shares are down 5.46% at $172.18 in market trading hours on the last check Monday.