The governments of Germany and the United States are starting a dispute over the laboratory that is trying to develop the vaccine for the new coronavirus. According to Die Welt, a German newspaper, Donald Trump is said to have recruited CureVac, the German pharmaceutical company in question, with “large amounts of money” to guarantee the exclusivity of the rights of a future vaccine.
According to the same newspaper, the German government led by Angela Merkel is then trying to prevent Donald Trump from rescuing the rights of an eventual vaccine – rights that, according to a source close to the White House cited by Die Welt, would serve to put into practice “ only in the United States ”. “The German Government is very interested in ensuring that vaccines and active substances against the new coronavirus are also developed in Germany and Europe. In this sense, the Government is in intense negotiations with CureVac ”, the German Ministry of Health said in statements to the newspaper. The executive will then have presented a counterproposal of financial incentives to be able to maintain the investigation in Germany, more specifically in the city of Tübingen, in the south of the country.
Meanwhile, the German Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer, said the issue will be discussed this Monday in the crisis group formed by the government of Angela Merkel to deal with the pandemic. Richard Grenell, the US ambassador to Berlin, said on Twitter that Die Welt’s report was “wrong”. On the other hand, Florian Von Der Mülbe, one of the founders and production director of CureVac, explained that the laboratory had started tests with various types of vaccines and was selecting the two most promising ones to start with clinical tests. According to Von Der Mülbe, the expectation of the pharmaceutical company is to have an experimental vaccine ready until june or july to seek approval from regulatory agencies and initiate human testing.
At the site official statement, CureVac confirms that on March 2, the company’s CEO was invited by the White House to “discuss strategies and opportunities for the rapid development and production of a coronavirus vaccine” with Donald Trump and Mike Pence and several members of taskforce created by the US government to combat the pandemic. However, it does not advance any details about the conversation – although CureVac, which works directly with the Paul Ehrlich Institute and the German Ministry of Health, has already officially stated that it does not intend to sell any research it has at hand.
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