It's not just the United States that is making reservations.
The European Commission announced on Wednesday that it had reached a preliminary agreement to obtain 200 million doses of a potential vaccine against the coronavirus developed by the German-American alliance BioNTech / Pfizer, with the option of acquiring 100 million doses. additional.
This is the sixth such agreement concluded by the EU, which did not indicate the sum potentially committed in this agreement.
"The final discussions with BioNTech-Pfizer mark further progress in expanding our strong and diverse offering of potential vaccines," Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in a statement.
"We are optimistic that one of them will prove to be a safe and effective vaccine against Covid-19 to help us beat this pandemic."
✅ # COVID19 vaccine exploratory talks concluded w / @ BioNTech_Group / @ pfizer.
We take another important step in our efforts to diversify our vaccine portfolio as much as possible.
The safety of 🇪🇺 & 🌍 citizens is the top priority.
This is non-negotiable.
👉 https://t.co/SGHbm6ciP9
- Stella Kyriakides (@SKyriakidesEU) September 9, 2020
The German BioNTech and the American laboratory Pfizer have been developing this vaccine project for several months, which entered a phase of large-scale clinical trials at the end of July.
In early July, they had reported positive preliminary results, after testing it on 45 people.
Two weeks later, the United States announced to advance $ 1.95 billion to laboratories to obtain 100 million doses of potential serum.
Japan did the same, to secure 120 million doses.
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In the global race for the vaccine against Covid-19, this is the sixth agreement of this type that the European Union passes.
It has already linked up with the Franco-British duo Sanofi-GSK, the American Johnson & Johnson, the German CureVac and the American biotech Moderna in order to secure the reservation of a large number of doses.
On August 14, the Commission signed a purchase contract with AstraZeneca for 300 million doses.
The Swedish-British group, however, announced Tuesday to take a break in clinical trials of its vaccine because of doubts about a disease developed by a test patient.
The envisaged contract with BioNTech-Pfizer provides for the possibility for all EU member states to purchase the vaccine, as well as to donate to low and middle income countries.
