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The European Commission announced on Friday (September 18) that it had successfully signed its second contract on behalf of member states with pharmaceutical manufacturers Sanofi and GSK for the supply of at least 300 million doses of its potential Covid-19 vaccine.
In exchange for the right to purchase the agreed amount of vaccine doses in a specified period of time, the European Commission will finance part of the initial costs faced by vaccine producers. But the vaccine doses will eventually be bought by the EU countries.
The EU executive is also discussing similar agreements with other vaccine manufacturers such as Johnson & Johnson, CureVac, Moderna and BioNTech.
In total, Brussels has already secured, or is negotiating, a reserve of nearly two billion doses of potential injections.
Following further outbreaks across Europe, EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakydes said in a statement that “an effective vaccine is more instrumental than ever in overcoming this pandemic and its devastating effects on our economies and societies.”
The deal was made on the deadline to join the World Health Organization (WHO) vaccine purchase program, which aims to accelerate vaccine development and distribute them fairly to avoid “nationalism of the vaccines “.
With nearly 30 million coronavirus cases worldwide and more than 937,000 deaths, “vaccines will be a vital tool in controlling the pandemic,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week.
So far, 92 low-income countries are involved in the WHO-led COVAX program, while some 80 higher-income countries have expressed interest in joining. Last month, the United States announced that it would not join a program “influenced by the corrupt WHO and China.”
Rich countries first
In her State of the Union address, commission chair Ursula von der Leyen warned against “vaccine nationalism” saying it puts lives at risk around the world.
However, a study by the NGO Oxfam shows that some countries, representing just 13 percent of the world’s population, have already purchased more than half of the promised doses of the top five Covid-19 vaccine candidates.
These vaccines are being developed by AstraZeneca, Gamaleya / Sputnik, Moderna, Pfizer, and Sinovac.
The vaccine candidates, which are in late-stage clinical trials, could deliver 5.94 billion doses, enough for nearly three billion of the world’s population, according to Oxfam.
But 51 percent of supplies have already been procured by wealthy countries, namely the United States, the European Union, Britain, Australia, Hong Kong and Macao, Japan, Switzerland and Israel.
While the remaining 2.6 billion doses have been bought or promised to developing countries such as India, Bangladesh, China or Brazil, among others.
“The most important thing is to increase production worldwide as soon as a vaccine is found so that there is enough for everyone, but there must also be a fair way to allocate doses that prioritizes people at risk in all countries.” , Anna. Marriott, Oxfam’s health policy adviser, told EUobserver.
“EU countries are understandably concerned with ensuring sufficient doses for their citizens, but until they challenge the pharmaceutical monopolies, their deals will leave many poorer nations in the cold,” he added.
Meanwhile, members of the European Parliament’s industry and environment committees will hold a hearing on Covid-19 vaccines next week, focusing on proper clinical trials, rapid manufacturing and commercialization, and equitable distribution of the vaccines.
