Scottish-made Valneva Covid vaccine expects approval from European Medicines Agency for April 2022 rollout

Valneva, the manufacturer of a Scottish-made vaccine, has announced it expects to begin delivering doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to European countries in the coming months.

The French firm, which has a base in Livingston, West Lothian, has been awaiting a review of its vaccine by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Last month, Valneva was issued a list of questions by the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) about its inactive vaccine candidate, VLA2001.

Having completed those, the company said on March 11 that it had received a small set of additional questions that it is confident of completing in the “coming days”.

Valneva indicated that subject to its responses being accepted, it now expects that conditional approval will be given for its vaccine in adults aged between 18 and 55-years-old, in April this year.

An agreement was signed by Valneva with the European Commission (EC) in November 2021 to supply up to 60 million doses of VLA2001 over the next two years.

In a statement, the firm said: “Valneva now anticipates receiving a positive CHMP recommendation for conditional approval of VLA2001 for primary immunization in adults 18 to 55 years of age in April 2022.

“Following such conditional approval, the company would expect to start delivering planned doses of VLA2001 to European countries in the second quarter of 2022.”

In September last year, the UK Government terminated an agreement with Valneva for its Covid-19 vaccine.

Some 100 million doses of the vaccine were put on order after the UK increased its request by 40 million.

The Government served notice over allegations of a breach of the agreement.

However, Valneva “strenuously” denied the allegations made against it.

The former chairwoman of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, Dame Kate Bingham, later said that the UK Government may have “acted in bad faith” in the way that it cancelled the deal.

She criticised the decision to pull out of the deal before the company had finished the clinical testing of its Covid-19 vaccine.