By Alistair Smout
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain has signed agreements to secure 90 million doses of two possible COVID-19 vaccines from an alliance of Pfizer Inc and BioNTech, and the French group Valneva, the business ministry said on Monday.
Britain obtained 30 million doses of the experimental BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine, and an agreement in principle for 60 million doses of the Valneva vaccine, with an option of an additional 40 million doses if proven to be safe, effective and adequate, said the ministry. .
With no functional COVID-19 vaccine yet developed, Britain now has three different types of vaccines on request and a total of 230 million doses potentially available.
“This new partnership with some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical and vaccine companies will ensure that the UK has the best possible opportunity to secure a vaccine that protects those who are most at risk,” said Business Minister Alok Sharma.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
The agreements follow a previously announced agreement with AstraZeneca for the company to produce 100 million doses of its potential vaccine that is being developed in association with the University of Oxford.
Britain said it was the first such deal that Pfizer and BioNTech agreed to supply their vaccine, which is being tested in early to mid-stage trials.
The firms aim to make up to 100 million doses by the end of this year and potentially more than 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021, if the vaccine is to succeed.
It uses the so-called messenger RNA approach, in contrast to the more traditional full-length inactivated virus vaccine developed by Valneva.
The possible Valneva vaccine is still in preclinical trials, and the company aims to move into clinical trials by the end of 2020.
Britain also said Monday that it had secured treatments containing AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 neutralizing antibodies to protect people who cannot be vaccinated.
(Report by Alistair Smout; Edition by Richard Pullin and Peter Graff)
