A French lab will start producing in March the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Moderna, while another one will begin manufacturing the Pfizer/BioNTech jab a month later, French Industry Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said Wednesday.
“Production at the first site will begin in March for the Moderna vaccine,” at a lab operated by the French subcontractor Recipharm, Pannier-Runacher told RTL radio.
“We’ll then have a production site running in April for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine,” she added. The French Minister also noted that should the CureVac vaccine get the green light, the country could start producing it in May.
The announcement came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron said that production of Coronavirus vaccines on French soil would begin late February to early March. His comments came amid mounting criticism over his government’s planning of the vaccination programme and in particular the slow pace of its inoculation drive.