EU doubles Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine order to 600 million doses - France 24

Brussels (AFP)

The European Union has reached an agreement for the acquisition of 300 million additional doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19, thus doubling the quantity ordered, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday.

“We currently have access to 300 million doses of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine. The good news is that we have reached an agreement with BioNTech / Pfizer to extend this contract. With the new agreement, we could acquire in total up to 300 million additional doses "of this vaccine, she said at a press conference.

Brussels plans a firm order for 200 million additional doses of this vaccine developed by the alliance of the American Pfizer and the German BioNTech with an option for 100 million more, specifies a press release from the Commission, indicating that these additional doses will begin to be delivered in the second quarter of 2021.

This would allow the EU to acquire up to 600 million doses of this vaccine authorized since December 21, while the slowness of vaccination campaigns in member states is the subject of criticism.

The EU has signed contracts with six vaccine manufacturers in total: Pfizer-BioNTech, but also the Swedish-British AstraZeneca, the American Johnson & Johnson, the Franco-British duo Sanofi-GSK, the German CureVac and the American Moderna .

It is still in talks with the American Novavax.

Only two vaccines, those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna - which received the green light on Wednesday - are currently authorized by the EU.

The EU vaccine portfolio allows - potentially - to obtain "2.3 billion doses of vaccine, which is more than enough to immunize the entire population," she said.

BioNTech intends to run a new manufacturing unit in Marburg (Germany) in February, capable of supplying 250 million additional doses in the first half of 2021, the co-director of BioNTech Ugur Sahin told Spiegel on January 1.

This German site will strengthen the Belgian plant in Puurs where batches destined for the EU are produced.

The Commission negotiates contracts with the laboratories and it is then up to the States, which are responsible for logistics, to order them directly.

The quantities available for each country are allocated in proportion to their population.

While Berlin would seek, according to German media, to order vaccines outside the European process, Ursula von der Leyen recalled that this was excluded by Brussels: "There is a framework (of the EU), and it is legally We have all accepted that there would be no parallel negotiations, no parallel contracts, ”she insisted.

"The framework in which we work is a framework which is binding on the Twenty-Seven, we negotiate together," she added.

A spokesperson for the Commission had already indicated Wednesday that "to his knowledge", the additional doses that Berlin would seek to obtain "were part of" the European negotiations underway.

© 2021 AFP