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BRUSSELS, Jan.8 (Xinhua) – The European Union (EU) reached an agreement to double the supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, bringing the total to 600 million doses, the president of the European Commission said. , Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday.
“We now have access to 300 million doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine. Now the good news is that we have agreed with BioNTech-Pfizer to extend the contract. With the new agreement, we could purchase a total of up to 300 million additional doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine. In other words, this will allow us to double the number of doses of BioNTech-Pfizer, “he said at a press conference.
The additional doses will be delivered from the second quarter (Q2) of 2021, with 75 million available in Q2 and the remainder in Q3 and Q4.
With the 600 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and the 160 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, both authorized for conditional marketing in the EU, the bloc would have enough to vaccinate 380 million Europeans, which is “more than 80 percent of the European population, “noted von der Leyen.
Promising that more brands will be given the green light “in the coming weeks and months”, von der Leyen said the EU has so far secured up to 2.3 billion doses of the most promising candidate vaccines for the EU and its environs.
Addressing criticism of the EU’s slow start in launching vaccines compared to Britain and the United States, von der Leyen insisted that the EU has taken “the right course of action”, explaining that his commission had to select six out of 160 vaccine candidates. .
He stated that the commission would be monitoring the vaccination process together with the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. “Of course, we have to step up, we have to get more, we have to rapidly increase the number of vaccinations,” he admitted. Final product
