Covid-19: EU to buy 300M doses of BioNTech – Pfizer vaccine
The European Commission will on November 11 authorise a contract for up to 300 million doses of the vaccine developed by German companies BioNTech and Pfizer, EC President Ursula von der Leyen said.
“A safe and effective vaccine is our best chance to beat coronavirus and return to our normal lives,” she said.
In the past months, the European Commission had been working tirelessly to secure doses of potential vaccines, Von der Leyen said.
She described the BioNTech and Pfizer vaccine as “the most promising vaccine so far”.
“Once this vaccine becomes available, our plan is to deploy it quickly, everywhere in Europe. This will be the fourth contract with a pharmaceutical company to buy vaccines. And more will come. Because we need to have a broad portfolio of vaccines based on different technologies.”
Von der Leyen said that the European Commission had already started working with EU countries to prepare national vaccination campaigns.
“We are almost there. In the meantime, let us be prudent, and stay safe,” she said.
A statement by the companies on November 9 said that their mRNA-based vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, against SARS-CoV-2 had demonstrated evidence of efficacy against Covid-19 in participants without prior evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, based on the first interim efficacy analysis conducted on November 8 2020 by an external, independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) from the Phase 3 clinical study.
The Sofia Globe’s coverage of the Covid-19 situation is supported by the Embassies of Switzerland and Finland.
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