German laboratory CureVac abandons its first vaccine candidate

It is over for the 405 million doses pre-ordered by the European Union of the European vaccine against the coronavirus. The German laboratory CureVac announced Tuesday the abandonment of the development of its first candidate vaccine against Covid-19, initially hopeful but whose effectiveness has proved disappointing. The final results of its large-scale clinical study, published in early July, showed only 48% effectiveness.

Nevertheless, in agreement with Brussels and the British laboratory GSK, CureVac will now work on a second generation vaccine, more promising. “The global fight against Covid-19 continues and we are determined to make a decisive contribution to it with a safe and effective vaccine” but “the requirements for an effective fight against the virus and the variants that appear have changed”, explained Franz -Werner Haas, boss of CureVac, in a statement.