GSK and Med­ica­go have glob­al plans for their Covid-19 vac­cine. But WHO balks at Big To­bac­co in­vestor

Over the last cou­ple years, Glax­o­SmithK­line lent its ad­ju­vant tech­nol­o­gy to sev­er­al ex­per­i­men­tal Covid-19 vac­cines, and last month, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment fi­nal­ly came through with a first ap­proval. But will pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the to­bac­co in­dus­try stand in the way of a smooth glob­al roll­out?

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has not ac­cept­ed an emer­gency use list­ing (EUL) ap­pli­ca­tion for Med­ica­go’s plant-based Covid-19 vac­cine — which makes use of a GSK ad­ju­vant to boost im­mune re­sponse — be­cause of the Cana­di­an biotech’s ties to the to­bac­co in­dus­try.

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