The europeans will also receive the corona vaccine from the u.S. Manufacturer moderna, which is considered to be very promising.
The EU commission has negotiated a framework agreement for up to 160 million doses, according to commission head ursula von der leyen. The contract will be formally sealed on wednesday.
The EU commission now has contracts with the manufacturers of all three vaccines, which are given the best chance of rapid approval in the coming weeks. Besides moderna, these are biontech/pfizer and astrazeneca. All three had announced promising test data in recent days. According to this, all three vakzine are effective and contractual.
No corona vaccine has yet been approved in europe. The first licenses could be issued in december, according to expectations of the federal government and the eu commission. However, the vaccine must first be approved by the european medicines agency (EMA).
According to the manufacturer, the moderna vaccine now on order has an efficacy of 94.5 percent. The EMA has started a rolling review process for the drug, which aims at a comparatively quick approval.
EU commission concludes framework agreements with manufacturers on behalf of 27 member states. These contracts include upfront payments to allow the pharmaceutical companies to quickly ramp up production, as well as pre-emption rights for the EU states. Once a drug has been approved, all 27 countries are to have access to it at the same time, but initially only in small quantities according to production capacity.
They will be distributed in the EU according to population size. Germany has a share of 18.6 percent. In germany, on the other hand, high-risk groups and healthcare workers were initially allowed to be vaccinated. It will be months before everyone gets the chance to have a protective spike.
Brussel has already secured a wide range of vaccines during development, even with the expectation that not all will work smoothly. But if hopes for the promising vaccines are realized, the EU will eventually have more than enough units for all of its 450 million people, even if the vaccines usually have to be given twice.
In addition to the 160 million doses from moderna, the EU commission has secured up to 300 million doses from biontech/pfizer and another 300 million doses from astrazeneca. In addition, there are other contracts with manufacturers that are not quite as far along in development: up to 405 million doses from the german manufacturer curevac, up to 300 million doses from sanofi-GSK and up to 200 million doses from Johnson&Johnson.