"In the coming months, we will have a French vaccine against Covid-19," Gilles Bloch, CEO of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), told France Info on Wednesday morning.
Clinical trials for the vaccine are underway and could be rolled out in the second phase of the vaccination drive, he added.
Phase 3 clinical trials
Bloch would not commit to an exact date for the vaccine’s arrival on the market, but confirmed trials had already advanced to phase 3. “Things could go very quickly with the vaccine drive," he said.
The Inserm chief said he was confident the French-developed vaccine would be effective in the long term, "in the face of a virus that is mutating throughout the epidemic and will probably return in several waves".
“Several dozen vaccines are in the pipeline here in France," including a dozen being developed at Inserm laboratories, Bloch said.
Not in the lead, but still in the race
France's failure to produce a home-grown vaccine has provoked serious questions about the state of national medical research. Bloch conceded that France was not in the lead in the Covid vaccine race, but that it was not as far off as critics may suggest.
"From the start, we had candidate vaccines and manufacturers who were developing them from the first quarter of 2020. However, some isolated events led to us not making the right choices right away,” he explained.
Inserm is also developing treatments for Covid-19, with a new trial on a combination of monoclonal antibodies soon to launch.
Despite the global vaccination effort, Bloch said it was still necessary to pursue treatments, since the disease is unlikely to disappear in the near future.
"The vaccine will hopefully be taken up by as much of the population as possible," he told France Info. "But we need to remind ourselves that we still have a long road ahead, maybe even years, where the entire population will not be protected and more cases of Covid will arise.
“We need to have a therapeutic response to Covid, including the most serious cases."
Russia's Sputnik V vaccine rejected
While awaiting France's first homegrown vaccine, some French pharmaceuticals have stepped in to help with the global vaccination drive and produce rival vaccines such as Pfizer/BoiNTech's jab.
However, France's ministry for industry said on Tuesday that no French companies had signed contracts to work with Russia to produce its Sputnik V vaccine.
"We have not identified a site which meets Sputnik V production requirements," a spokesman for the ministry said.
Tuesday's statement appears to contradict earlier comments from the head of Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund claiming that his organisation had struck deals with production facilities in Italy, Spain, France and Germany to manufacture the Russian shot.
