money Sanofi walks back comments to give U.S. vaccine first
Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins Seana Smith to break down the latest surrounding initial remarks by Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson who said the U.S. would get the first and "largest pre-order" of COVID-19 vaccines.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: The number of confirmed cases worldwide inching closer to that 4.4 million number. Here in the US, that number topping 1.39 million. We had some news on the vaccine front today, and that, Sanofi, is walking back his comments after saying that the US would get its vaccine first. We have Anjalee Khemlani joining us now for the latest on this. And Anjalee, what can you tell us about what was initially said from the CEO and then what they're coming out saying today?
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Right, Seana. So yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg, Sanofi CEO did say that the US would get preference when the vaccines were approved, and that had to do with the US government basically through the National Institutes of Health barda arm, which we know is the one that received that $3 billion in funding from Congress and is investing in not just the vaccine candidates, but also, in helping companies produce at risk of volumes of these vaccine candidates in order to meet that unprecedented global demand that we've been talking about. So in those comments, the CEO did anger at the French government. We know Sanofi is a French company.
We had Édouard Philippe, the prime minister, tweet that there needs to be equitable access for all. Meanwhile, the President Manuel Macron is going to be doing a follow up meeting in his office with the Sanofi team, so it's going to be interesting to see how that pans out. But it appears that they are now walking it back, saying that the US is not, in fact, going to receive preference, but that it will be distributed evenly everywhere. And that they are in discussions as well with the European Union to ensure that just as the FDA has sort of sped up the process and eased regulations to help this process through for all the vaccine candidates, that in the EU as well, they're looking for that, Seana.
