The European Commission (EC) has doubled its order of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine, after finalised an agreement for an additional 300 million doses.
Pfizer/BioNTech reached an initial supply agreement with the EU in November 2020 for 300 million doses of their mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine.
The deal for an additional 300 million doses has now finalised by the EC, after the preliminary deal was announced in January.
An EC spokesman told Reuters that “the [European] Commission has adopted the new contract today”.
EU states are set to receive 200 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine this year, an EU official told Reuters.
In January, Pfizer/BioNTech said that they would be temporarily reducing shipments of their COVID-19 vaccine to the EU.
At the time, Pfizer said in a statement that shipments of the vaccine doses were being impacted by changes to its manufacturing processes that were being made as part of its new production capacity goal.
“Although this will temporarily impact shipments in late January to early February, it will provide a significant increase in doses available for patients in late February and March,” the company added.
Following the announcement of the delay, EC president Ursula von der Leyen said that she had spoken to Pfizer, adding that the company’s chief executive Albert Bourla had guaranteed that all orders due for delivery in the first quarter of the year would arrive.
The EU has also been involved in a dispute with AstraZeneca (AZ) over delivery delays of its Oxford University-partnered COVID-19 vaccine.
Initially, AZ said that it would reduce initial deliveries of the doses to the EU by 60% in the first quarter of 2021.
AZ added that it would aim to deliver 31 million doses to the EU in Q1. A senior official said that the reduction in anticipated deliveries was due to production problems.
Previously, around 80 million doses of the AZ/Oxford University vaccine were expected to be delivered by the end of March.
Following this, von der Leyen announced that AZ will deliver nine million additional doses of the vaccine in the first quarter, with 40 million doses in total now expected to be delivered in this timeframe.