US blockade endangers Curevac vaccine production

According to the Tübingen-based company Curevac, the planned mass production of its corona vaccine is in acute danger due to a lack of raw materials. As a result, the US government is blocking the export of essential materials through the application of a war economy decree. "Due to the Defense Production Act, we cannot get certain goods out of the USA," the Spiegel quoted Curevac CEO Franz-Werner Haas as saying. "We don't always get the materials we need." The biotechnology company Curevac has developed a vaccine using the mRNA process, which is also the basis for the preparations already in use by Moderna and Biontech / Pfizer. The Curevac product is still in the clinical testing stage and has not yet been approved. The company expects approval from the EU Medicines Agency in May or June. Although the vaccine comes onto the market months later than the competing products, the Curecav preparation is of great importance for the European Union, especially for the German vaccination campaign. The company has aligned its production exclusively to the EU for 2021 and aims to produce 300 million cans by the end of the year. How much of it will actually be available in the summer months, as hoped, is currently unclear, according to the "Spiegel" report. "We sometimes live from hand to mouth," said Haas. "That makes it difficult to build up a large supply." The vaccine has around 90 elements. If only one thing is missing, no production is possible. The materials withheld by the USA are therefore, for example, nucleotides or specially certified medical plastic containers. Some of them are produced by German companies in the USA.