EU Secures Another Covid-19 Vaccine for Europeans

The European Commission on Monday announced a new contract to secure up to 405 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine produced by the European company CureVac.

“This is the fifth contract with a pharmaceutical company for our Covid-19 vaccine portfolio,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a press conference.

The contract comes after the Commission’s agreement last week with BioNTech and Pfizer for a vaccine.

According to von der Leyen, the Commission is working on a sixth contract, with US company Moderna.

“We have already concluded exploratory talks with Moderna. We hope to finalise the contract soon,” she said.

The Commission has signed three contracts to pre-order potential vaccines with the Swedish-British company AstraZeneca, the US company Johnson & Johnson (up to 400 million doses each) and the French-UK company Sanofi-GSK (up to 300 million doses).

“We do not know at this stage, which vaccines will end up being safe and effective. The European Medicines Agency EMA will authorise them only after a robust assessment. This is why we need to have a broad portfolio of vaccines based on very different technologies,” the Commission’s president said.