HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

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The German newspaper reported that the U.S. government had offered funds to lure CureVac to the U.S., and the German government was making counter-offers to tempt it to stay.

“The German government is very interested in ensuring that vaccines and active substances against the new coronavirus are also developed in Germany and Europe,” a German Health Ministry spokeswoman, confirming a quote in the newspaper, said.

“In this regard, the government is in intensive exchange with the company CureVac,” she added.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told a news conference that the government’s coronavirus crisis committee would discuss the CureVac case on Monday.

While CureVac issued a statement on Sunday, in which it said that “the company rejects current rumors of an acquisition.”

CureVac’s chief production officer and co-founder told Reuters last week the company had started with a multitude of coronavirus vaccine candidates and was now selecting the two best to go into clinical trials.

The privately-held company based in Tuebingen, Germany hopes to have an experimental vaccine ready by June or July to then seek the go-ahead from regulators for testing on humans.

This comes as coronavirus cases continue to increase by thousands across the world. Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that Europe had become the epicenter of the virus spread with Italy been hit the hardest as over 25,000 cases have been reported.