The European Union is expected to acquire up to 600 million doses of one of the six vaccines it covets to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is good news as the slowness of vaccination campaigns in member states is the subject of criticism, as in France.
This Friday morning, an agreement was indeed found between Europe and the alliance of the American Pfizer and the German BioNTech, who have developed the vaccine authorized since December 21.
"We currently have access to 300 million doses of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine (...) With the new agreement, we could acquire a total of up to 300 million additional doses," said the president of the company. the Ursula von der Leyen Commission.
Delivery from the second quarter of 2021
In detail, Brussels is planning a firm order for 200 million additional doses, with an option for 100 million, said a Commission statement, indicating that this last order will begin to be delivered in the second quarter of 2021. At the same time, the The BioNTech / Pfizer alliance was pleased that its vaccine appeared effective against a "key mutation" of the British and South African variants of the coronavirus, recently detected in France.
However, one of the limits of this brief study, emphasized by the authors themselves, is that it does not cover all the mutations present in these variants.
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At this stage, the European Union 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.
"2.3 billion doses of vaccines"
"With these two authorized vaccines, we have already ensured a quantity of doses which allows us to vaccinate 380 million Europeans, this is more than 80% of the population, and other vaccines will follow in the weeks and months to come, ”said the head of the European executive on Friday.
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The EU vaccine portfolio allows - potentially - to obtain "2.3 billion doses of vaccine, which is more than enough to immunize the entire population", also assured Ursula von der Leyen.
As a reminder, the Commission negotiates contracts with 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.
