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Mainz / New York (dpa) - After the conditional approval of their corona vaccine in the European Union, the Mainz company Biontech and the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer want to initiate the first deliveries of the preparation to the EU member states.
"The deliveries will start immediately and will take place gradually over the course of 2020 and 2021 in order to ensure a fair distribution of the vaccines in accordance with the contractual conditions in the EU," the company announced on Monday evening.
The vaccine doses for Europe are said to be manufactured in the Biontech production facilities in Germany and in the Pfizer plant in Puurs, Belgium.
"Today's conditional market approval by the European Commission is a historic achievement," said Biontech boss and co-founder Ugur Sahin.
The vaccine was the first to be tested and approved in a large study on more than 44,000 subjects in less than a year.
“This great achievement is based on decades of work by many scientists around the world and is also evidence of our successful collaboration with our partner Pfizer,” said Sahin.
"We believe that vaccination can help reduce the number of people in the high-risk population who are hospitalized," he added.
Biontech and Pfizer would collect further efficacy and safety data over the next two years and "test the vaccine for any new mutations that emerge."
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According to Biontech, the vaccine is marketed in the EU under the name Comirnaty.
The name combines the words Covid-19, mRNA (name of the messenger molecule), Community (English for community) and "Immunity" (immunity).
With the name, the company wants to highlight the first approval of a vaccine based on messenger RNA (mRNA).
In addition, the name should underline the joint efforts that this approval would now have made possible.
Biontech
Paul Ehrlich Institute for vaccine development
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