Sanofi CEO Paul Hud­son’s com­ments yes­ter­day that the US will get first ac­cess to the com­pa­ny’s Covid-19 vac­cine, should it be ap­proved, were met with swift back­lash yes­ter­day in France, both from his own com­pa­ny and a mem­ber of the French gov­ern­ment.

First, hours af­ter Hud­son’s in­ter­view ap­peared on Bloomberg.com, Sanofi emailed jour­nal­ists a terse state­ments walk­ing back its CEO’s re­marks– sort of. The com­pa­ny said that while vac­cines from US pro­duc­tion will be main­ly pre­served for Amer­i­cans, pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty else­where will sup­ply Eu­rope and the rest of the globe. The tech­nol­o­gy Sanofi us­es for its Covid-19 vac­cine can­di­date is pri­mar­i­ly man­u­fac­tured in the US, al­though the com­pa­ny said it is ex­pand­ing ca­pac­i­ty in ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties in Eu­rope and else­where.

“We have al­ways been com­mit­ted in these un­prece­dent­ed cir­cum­stances to make our vac­cine ac­ces­si­ble to every­one,” they wrote. “Sanofi ben­e­fits from a di­ver­si­fied foot­print around the world. We have man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty in the US, Eu­rope and all oth­er main re­gions. The US pro­duc­tion will be main­ly for the US and the rest of the man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty will cov­er Eu­rope and the rest of the world.”

Then a French of­fi­cial ap­peared on a ra­dio show and called any plan to give Amer­i­cans first ac­cess “un­ac­cept­able.”

”For us, it would be un­ac­cept­able that there be priv­i­leged ac­cess for this or that coun­try on a pre­text that would be a fi­nan­cial pre­text,” ju­nior econ­o­my min­is­ter, Agnes Pan­nier-Runach­er, said on an in­ter­view with Sud Ra­dio.

Hud­son told Bloomberg on Wednes­day that “The U.S. gov­ern­ment has the right to the largest pre-or­der” of the ex­per­i­men­tal vac­cine be­cause a US agency, BAR­DA, has fund­ed its de­vel­op­ment. “It’s in­vest­ed in tak­ing the risk,” Hud­son said.

Hud­son’s com­ments en­tered in­to a sim­mer­ing bat­tle over who will get a vac­cine once it’s ap­proved. That bat­tle has par­tic­u­lar­ly cen­tered on the US and the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, which has poured over $1 bil­lion in­to top com­pa­nies de­vel­op­ing vac­cines but has es­chewed in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion — in­clud­ing an $8 bil­lion fund raised ear­li­er this month — in fa­vor of an in­ter­nal and thus far vague­ly de­fined ef­fort to get Amer­i­cans in­oc­u­lat­ed first.

The de­bate be­gan in earnest in March, when Reuters and a lead­ing Ger­man news­pa­per re­port­ed that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion tried to lure Ger­man mR­NA vac­cine com­pa­ny Cure­Vac to the Unit­ed States. Al­though Cure­Vac de­nied the re­ports, Ger­man sci­en­tists and of­fi­cials re­spond­ed with dis­may and ac­ri­mo­ny, con­demn­ing ef­forts for any coun­try to se­cure ex­clu­sive ac­cess to a vac­cine. The EU sub­se­quent­ly gave Cure­Vac an $89 mil­lion grant, in part to ex­pand man­u­fac­tur­ing on the con­ti­nent.

Since then, As­traZeneca has al­so promised some ear­ly ac­cess to the UK for the vac­cine its build­ing out of Ox­ford, while some world lead­ers have called for more uni­ver­sal ac­cess. To­day, UN­AIDS and OX­FAM re­leased a let­ter call­ing for a “Peo­ple’s Vac­cine” by which the WHO “es­tab­lish­es a glob­al and eq­ui­table rapid man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion plan – that is ful­ly-fund­ed by rich na­tions – for the vac­cine and all COVID-19 prod­ucts and tech­nolo­gies that guar­an­tees trans­par­ent ‘at true cost-prices.”

The lead­ing vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers are tak­ing ef­forts to dra­mat­i­cal­ly ex­pand ca­pac­i­ty, but ex­perts warn that any vac­cines will come in batch­es, rather than all at once.

BAR­DA, found­ed in 2005 to pro­tect the US from bi­o­log­ic threats, is fund­ing some of the world’s lead­ing Covid-19 vac­cine ef­forts, back­ing not on­ly Sanofi, but al­so putting around $1 bil­lion be­hind J&J and Mod­er­na’s ef­forts. Over the last 15 years, they have fund­ed both Sanofi and its re­com­bi­nant vac­cine sub­sidiary Pro­tein Sci­ences, which is mak­ing the Covid-19 vac­cine, to shore up ca­pac­i­ty to build a pan­dem­ic vac­cine. This spring, they in­vest­ed around $30 mil­lion be­hind the Pro­tein Sci­ences ef­fort.

Pro­tein Sci­ences’ re­com­bi­nant vac­cines are pri­mar­i­ly made at a BAR­DA-fund­ed fa­cil­i­ty in Pearl Riv­er, New York. The com­pa­ny’s BAR­DA-fund­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Swift­wa­ter, Penn­syl­va­nia will al­so be used. There is an ad­di­tion­al part­ner­ship with Uni­gen in Japan.

In his re­marks, Hud­son was crit­i­cal of Eu­rope for fail­ing to back pri­vate vac­cine ef­forts, call­ing the US and Chi­na a “mod­el” of pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ship and warn­ing, “don’t let Eu­rope be left be­hind.” The French phar­ma gi­ant said they are work­ing on ex­pe­dit­ing the process of get­ting vac­cines to Eu­rope.

“The co­op­er­a­tion we have with BAR­DA in the US al­lows us to ini­ti­ate pro­duc­tion as ear­ly as pos­si­ble while we con­tin­ue to de­vel­op and reg­is­ter the vac­cine,” Sanofi said. “In the mean­time, we are very en­cour­aged to see the mo­bi­liza­tion of the EU Com­mis­sion over the past weeks, ex­plor­ing sim­i­lar mea­sures that could ex­pe­dite both vac­cines de­vel­op­ment and ac­cess to the Eu­ro­pean pop­u­la­tion. We are hav­ing very con­struc­tive con­ver­sa­tions with the EU in­sti­tu­tions and the French and Ger­man gov­ern­ment amongst oth­ers.”

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89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.