Document 39
Subject:
RE: J&J Announces a Lead Vaccine Candidate for COVID-19
From:
(SANTE)
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2020 6:00 PM
To:
[JPPBE]'
Cc:
[JPPBE] ;
[JPPBE] ;
[JPPBE] ;
,
[JJCBE] ; SANTE DG ;
(SANTE)
Subject: RE: J&J Announces a Lead Vaccine Candidate for COVID‐19
Dear
,
Thank you very much for your kind message and I also hope that your family and colleagues are well
and staying safe.
It is very interesting to hear about the potential vaccine candidate. My colleagues in the
pharmaceutical unit are following all developments closely and I have forwarded your message to
them.
I understand the difficult decision to postpone the EHP plenary and have informed also Anne
Bucher’s office about this development. Please let us know when you have a new date in
September.
I look forward to meeting again in better times and continuing to work with young people interested
in putting health first and proposing innovative solutions. We have certainly seen the importance of
health preparedness, planning and crisis response in the last few weeks.
Best
From:
[JPPBE]
@its.jnj.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2020 5:09 PM
To:
(SANTE)
@ec.europa.eu>
Cc:
[JPPBE]
@ITS.JNJ.com>;
[JPPBE]
@its.jnj.com>;
[JPPBE]
@ITS.JNJ.com>;
JJCBE]
@its.jnj.com>
Subject: J&J Announces a Lead Vaccine Candidate for COVID‐19
Dear
I hope you and your family are staying healthy in these troubling times.
I wanted to share with you the below good news that J&J has identified a
lead vaccine
candidate for COVID‐19 and will be
moving swiftly towards human clinical trials by
September 2020.
Like everyone at the Commission, J&J is working hard to bring solutions to society under
these unprecedented circumstances. Now, more than ever, we want to reiterate our
commitment to partnering with DG SANTE to contribute to our common goal to build a
healthier Europe.
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In addition, we continue to highly value our collaborations with you and your team.
Particularly as you have been such a staunch supporter of the
European Health Parliament,
we wanted to also provide you with an update on EHP.
With respect to the health and wellbeing of EHP members, speakers and stakeholders ‐
many of whom are healthcare workers facing difficult personal and professional times
themselves ‐ we have taken the tough decision to
postpone the closing plenary that was
scheduled to take place on the 10 June and which you and Ms. Bucher had very kindly
agreed to attend. In light of the current circumstances, the closing plenary of this edition
will be
rescheduled for early September. We would like to re‐extend a warm invitation to
you both to attend this rescheduled session and hope that you can provisionally indicate
your interest.
We continue to see a role for young Europeans to play – leading with open and informed
minds to help develop short, medium and longer‐term solutions to help make health
systems more sustainable, better able to prevent, react, and recover from times of strain.
If you have any questions about the vaccine development or other initiatives that J&J is
involved in, please do not hesitate to come back to me.
For questions regarding the EHP, please reach out to the team here in copy who you already
know well.
With very best wishes,
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Begin forwarded message:
From:
[JPPBE]
To: "BUCHER Anne (SANTE)"
@ec.europa.eu>
Cc:
[JPPBE]
@its.jnj.com>;
[JPPBE]
@ITS.JNJ.com>;
[JPPBE]
@its.jnj.com>;
[JPPBE]
@its.jnj.com>
Subject: J&J Announces a Lead Vaccine Candidate for COVID‐19
J&J Announces a Lead Vaccine Candidate for COVID‐19
Dear Director General,
I sincerely hope you and your loved ones are doing well during these difficult times.
As I believe we share a common goal to contribute to a healthy Europe and given your
crucial work in advancing the well‐being of European citizens, I would like to share
information with you regarding Johnson & Johnson’s efforts to collaborate in the fight
against COVID‐19.
This 30th of March, Johnson & Johnson announced the selection of a
lead COVID‐19 vaccine
candidate.
We are moving swiftly toward
human clinical trials of the lead vaccine candidate
by
September 2020 and we anticipate the first batches of a COVID‐19 vaccine could be
available for
emergency use authorization in early 2021, a substantially accelerated
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timeframe. For comparison: the typical vaccine development process involves a number of
different stages, ranging from 5 to 7
years before a candidate even qualifies for approval.
To upscale this effort, we have expanded our landmark partnership between the Janssen
Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and the Biomedical Advanced Research
and Development Authority (BARDA). Together, we have committed over $1 billion dollars
of investment to co‐fund vaccine
research, development and clinical testing.
J&J will expand its manufacturing capacity to ensure
global supply of more than one billion
doses of a
safe and effective vaccines worldwide. The Company plans to begin production
at risk imminently and is committed to bringing an affordable
vaccine to the public on a
not‐
for‐profit basis for emergency pandemic use. The world is facing an urgent public health
crisis and we are committed to doing our part to make a COVID‐19 vaccine
available and
affordable globally as quickly as possible.
We will also upscale Janssen’s ongoing efforts to
identify new or existing treatments. We
are working with global partners to screen a library of existing antiviral molecules, with the
aim of identifying compounds with promising antiviral activity against the novel coronavirus,
SARS‐CoV‐2 (also known as 2019‐nCoV) that could contribute to providing immediate relief
to the current outbreak. This work is being conducted in partnership with the Rega Institute
for Medical Research (
KU Leuven/University of Leuven), in
Belgium.
This incredibly swift progress would not be possible without intense
public‐private
collaboration. We still have a long way to go, but we are confident that this step marks a
major milestone in ending COVID‐19 for patients everywhere.
Our press release is available here.
I also want to let you know how J&J is
supporting frontline health workers, the backbone of
our health systems and vital resources for global health security.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic and with the rapidly evolving strain on
health systems,
we have mobilized to provide equipment, products, financial donations, and even our own
human resources to support organizations and healthcare workers on the front lines. Our
commitments include:
A new global
volunteer leave policy for medically trained J&J employees who are
either called to serve or who volunteer to provide medical service support for the
COVID‐19 pandemic.
Collaboration with the Belgium government to increase the capacity of
COVID‐19
testing in Belgium by offering testing capacity of our
J&J laboratories in Beerse. We
are also
producing disinfectant hand liquid in our industrial site in Geel
to supply
hospitals.
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$50M to the Johnson & Johnson Center for Health Worker Innovation to aid in the
immediate COVID‐19 response, primarily focused on supporting frontline health
workers in the most affected‐countries. Press release here.
$1M for The COVID‐19 Solidarity Response Fund, which will enable individuals, and
organizations around the world to directly support the
World Health Organization’s
work to prevent, detect and respond to the COVID‐19 pandemic (WHO).
$500K financial donation to the Swiss Red Cross.
Our team remains committed to these response efforts and available to answer any
questions you may have, as we continue trying to live up to Our Promise to change the
trajectory of health for humanity.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us directly.
Sincerely,
Johnson & Johnson
GA&P EMEA,
GA&P EMEA,
GA&P EMEA,
GA&P EMEA,
Pharmaceuticals
Consumer
Medical Devices
EU External Affairs &
Alliance Development
Square de Meeûs 23, 5th floor
BE-1000 Brussels, Belgium
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