29 May Third IFPMA Global Media Briefing – COVID-19 Vaccines

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Dear Colleagues,

A you know, IFPMA just organized the third COVID-19 media briefing, on the status of collaboration to speed up the research, development and manufacturing of vaccines against COVID-19. The briefing included an overview of R&D for the COVID-19 vaccines pipeline and how IFPMA member companies are collaborating to develop and manufacture at scale safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines rapidly, equitably, and at scale.

We had a fantastic line-up:

  • Emma Walmsley, Chief Executive Officer, GlaxoSmithKline
  • Dr. Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer
  • Pascal Soriot, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, AstraZeneca
  • Paul Stoffels, M.D., Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer, Johnson & Johnson

Our industry reaffirmed our commitment to deliver safe, quality, effective, and affordable COVID-19 vaccines to all. The message of unprecedented collaboration and resources committed by the biopharmaceutical industry to develop safe and effective vaccines, and the global solidarity involving industry to take decisions to scale up manufacturing hundreds of millions, possible billions of doses came out very strongly. The questions put by journalists covered a lot of ground, including on the research around the virus, clinical trials for candidate vaccines, possible challenges related to distribution and the industry’s views on patent pooling.

The media briefing attracted over 130 journalists from around the world, including major outlets such as the major wires including: Associated Press, Bloomberg, DPA, Reuters. Other important media included, from Australia: ABC and The Age, Germany: ARD, Die Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, India: Live Mint and The Economic Times, Japan: Yomiuri Shimbun and Kyodo News, Philippines: Daily Enquirer, Turkey: Dunya, Switzerland RTS and Swiss Radio and TV, the UK: BBC, The Economist, The Financial Times, Nature, The Times, USA: CNN, New York Times, Science, STAT, Washington Post. The impressive media interest, is of course because of the topic, but also thanks to the unique line up of CEOs/CSO from industry sharing a common platform. We also appreciate the support we received from member associations who reached out to their media contacts.

I invite you to watch the recorded media briefing here. On this occasion, we have also released a News Release, which you can read here, including the IFPMA Policy Principles on COVID-19 Vaccines Initiative (here).

We will continue to highlight our efforts to find a COVID-19 vaccine next week, on the occasion of the Global Vaccine Summit. As you know, we have just launched an IFPMA-ABPI joint report “Generation Gavi: Partnering to protect health through life-saving vaccines” to celebrate our industry’s support to Gavi for the past 20 years. At a time when the social and economic of infectious diseases has been brought into a very sharp focus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this is an important time to underscore the commitment of our industry to innovation and partnerships to protect the health of the next generation and support Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance’s mission to reach 300 million more children with the full protection of the broadest vaccine portfolio in history.

Best regards,

Thomas