BRUSSELS – The European Commission has renewed a contract with pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech to purchase an additional 300 million doses of their vaccine against the coronavirus disease, President Ursula von der Leyen said today, Sputnik news agency reported.
“As you know, we have right now access to 300 million doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine. Now the good news is, we now have agreed with BioNTech-Pfizer to extend this contract.
“With the new agreement, we could purchase a total of up to an additional 300 million doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine,” von der Leyen said at a briefing.
She added that 75 million of those new vaccines would be available in the second quarter of the year, with the rest arriving in the third and fourth quarters.
Von der Leyen said the amount of coronavirus vaccine doses contracted by the European Union so far is enough to cover 380 million people, or 80% of the population.
Promising that more vaccines will come “in the following months”, the commission chief said “We have to vaccinate as many Europeans as possible and as quickly as possible.”
There are two coronavirus vaccines currently with authorisation for use in the European Union – one produced by Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. – Bernama, January 8, 2021
