Valneva SE (VALN)

[p0]

Review VAL<->UK + Bingham expects Omicron vaccine impact to be known in a week

Under Bingham's leadership, the UK taskforce ordered vaccines as they were still being trialled, securing supplies from Pfizer (PFE.N), AstraZeneca (AZN.L), Moderna (MRNA.O) and others to give Britain a head start in the rollout.

She said on Wednesday that she had backed the vaccine from French company Valneva (VLS.PA), which differs from others by relying on an inactivated virus similar to flu vaccines, because having a varied portfolio would be useful when variants emerged.

"The idea of having that as a potential vaccine in our portfolio, knowing it was going to come on stream later than the earlier ones, was precisely that you could deal with variants," she said.

She added that "unfortunately" the Valneva contract had been cancelled. "I wasn't part of the decision so I don't know the basis of it," she said. "But I would have thought that was a useful vaccine to have in our panoply of tools to actually address variants and future pandemic strains."

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-bingham-expects-omicron-vaccine-impact-be-known-week-2021-12-01/