The US government has secured 500 million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine at a not-for-profit price for donation to the world’s ‘poorest’ countries, the companies announced today.
As part of the agreement, 200 million vaccine doses will be delivered in 2021 and the further 300 million doses are earmarked for delivery in the first half of 2022.
The deliveries of the 200 million doses will begin in August and continue until the end of the year, while the 300 million doses for 2022 will be delivered between January and the end of June in 2022.
The companies are planning to manufacture the doses for this deal at Pfizer’s US-based facilities.
The US will allocate the doses to 92 low- and lower middle-income countries and economies, as defined by Gavi’s COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) and the 55 member states of the African Union.
In a statement, Pfizer and BioNTech said that, alongside the US government, they will work with COVAX – the international vaccine sharing facility – to deliver the vaccines to the specified countries in the ‘most efficient and equitable’ way.
According to sources, the deal was negotiated by White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients and its coronavirus task force team over the last four weeks.
COVAX is the vaccine pillar of the WHO’s ACT Accelerator – a collaborative initiative co-led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Gavi that aims to accelerate development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines.
“Our partnership with the US government will help bring hundreds of millions of doses of our vaccine to the poorest countries around the world as quickly as possible. COVID-19 has impacted everyone, everywhere, and to win the battle against this pandemic, we must ensure expedited access to vaccines for all. I want to thank President Biden for his leadership in protecting the least advantaged of our global neighbours,” said Albert Bourla, chairman and chief executive officer of Pfizer.
“As a vaccine developer, we felt the duty to develop a well-tolerated and highly effective vaccine and make it available to as many people worldwide as possible. Today’s agreement underlines that the joint efforts of the private and the public sector are providing solutions to help end this pandemic,” added Ugur Sahin, chief executive officer and co-founder of BioNTech.