The European Commission announced on Wednesday 28 July that it has entered into a joint procurement framework contract with the pharmaceutical company GSK to obtain up to 220,000 doses of sotrovimab (VIR-7831), the candidate treatment for Covid-19 developed by the British company.
This monoclonal antibody-based treatment - developed in collaboration with the American company VIR Biotechnology - had obtained an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration at the end of May. At the European level, it is still under evaluation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and can therefore only be used in the EU once it has been granted a European marketing authorisation or emergency use authorisation in a Member State.
So far, 16 Member States have expressed interest in purchasing sotrovimab. The latter can be used to treat patients with mild symptoms who do not require supplemental oxygen, but who are at high risk of severe Covid-19, says the European Commission.
“Ongoing studies suggest that early treatment can reduce the number of patients that progress to more severe forms and require hospitalisation or admission to the intensive care units”, the institution says.
Sotrovimab is part of a portfolio of five Covid-19 therapies identified as promising by the European Commission in June (see EUROPE 12752/16).
It is also the second candidate treatment to be the subject of a joint procurement framework contract: a first contract for another monoclonal antibody-based treatment, REGN-COV2, was concluded at the end of March with the Swiss laboratory Roche.
At this stage, the Commission still expects at least three new Covid-19 therapies (see EUROPE 12714/11) to be approved in the EU by October, said European Commissioner for Health Stella Kyriakides. These treatments will play “a pivotal role in Europe’s return to a new normal”, she reiterated. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)