Fourth Agreement for Supply of COVID-19 Vaccine between European Commission and BioNTech - Pfizer Alliance
- 12/11/2020
- Articles
As part of its European Vaccines Strategy adopted in June 2020 (see, Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News Alert of 18 June 2020), the European Commission (the Commission) announced on 11 November 2020 that it approved a fourth agreement providing for access to a potential vaccine against Covid-19 (see, attached press release).
The Commission’s partner for this agreement is an alliance between BioNTech and Pfizer. The parties agreed on an initial purchase of 200 million doses and on an option for the Commission to request a further 100 million doses that will be supplied once the vaccine is demonstrably safe and effective against Covid-19. If it secures a European marketing authorisation, the vaccine will ultimately end up in the hands of interested EU Member States which will have the possibility to donate the vaccine to lower and middle-income countries or redirect it to other European countries.
The vaccine has elicited significant enthusiasm following the publication on 9 November 2020 of initial trial results involving 94 cases. These indicated a vaccine efficacy rate of more than 90% at 7 days after administration of the second dose (the vaccination consists of a 2-dose schedule).
The agreement follows similar deals with AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK and Janssen Pharmaceutica (see, Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News Alert of 31 August 2020; Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News Alert of 21 September 2020; and Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News Alert of 12 October 2020). The Commission also concluded exploratory talks with CureVac and Moderna.