Pre-emptive move by pharma manufacturer? Before the ‘shit hits the fan’? Takin’ the money and running?
A Quebec-based drug manufacturer that produced a Canadian COVID-19 vaccine and other plant-based drugs is closing.
Parent company Mitsubishi Chemical Group announced on Thursday it plans to shut down Medicago Inc., headquartered in Quebec City, “in due course, in accordance with local laws and regulations.”
Last year, Health Canada approved (or authorized?) Medicago’s plant-based COVID-19 vaccine, Covifenz, for adults aged 18 to 64. The vaccine was meant to be administered in two doses, and clinical trials showed it was 71 per cent effective in preventing COVID-19 infection beginning one week after the second dose.
In October 2020, before the vaccine was approved, the federal government penned a deal to buy up to 76 million doses of the drug, in addition to providing $173 million in funding to support the vaccine's development and the construction of a new Quebec City manufacturing plant.
Must be that speed of science kind of deal?
Medicago had been preparing to launch commercial-scale production of the vaccine, but its parent company announced Friday it would cease all of its operations, citing changes to the COVID-19 vaccine landscape
“The group judged that it was not viable to continue to make further investment in the commercialization of Medicago’s development products, and decided to cease all of its operations at Medicago and proceed with an orderly wind up of its business and operations,” according to a statement published on Mitsubishi Chemical Group’s website Thursday.
Remember this from PM Trudeau?
The Government of Canada has now signed agreements with Medicago, AstraZeneca, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, Pfizer, and Moderna.
Agreements signed to date will secure access to up to 358 million doses of their different COVID-19 vaccine candidates.(That’s ten jabs for each and every Canadian)
One wonders why Canada would secure so many doses of this experimental jab?
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