Europe Orders 100 Million More Doses of Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine

The EU has exercised its option to purchase 100 million additional doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s two-dose COVID-19 vaccine, putting the trade bloc in line to receive 600 million shots in total this year as it clamors for additional supplies to boost its vaccination efforts.

Sean Marett, BioNTech’s chief business and commercial officer, said that the increased supply commitment is now the companies’ largest agreement globally. The 600 million shots will enable the EU to vaccinate two-thirds of its population, he said. The trade bloc has set a goal of having its member states vaccinate 70 percent of their adult populations, at a minimum, by the summer.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has said that the companies have met all of their supply deadlines with the EU thus far and intend to deliver 250 million doses in the second quarter, four times the number of doses provided in the first quarter. The shots will be manufactured at Pfizer and BioNTech facilities in Europe, the companies said.

Despite speculation that the EU may decline to extend its contracts for the two adenovirus-based vaccines from AstraZeneca (AZ) and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) because of concerns over rare blood clots, the European Commission has said that it still intends to “keep all options open.”

But EC President Ursula von der Leyen has signaled a need to focus on messenger-RNA vaccines like Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna’s, and the bloc is currently hashing out a 1.8 billion- dose contract extension with Pfizer (DID, April 15).

Europe has encountered numerous delays in obtaining stocks of COVID-19 vaccines, an issue it has blamed mainly on AZ’s failure to meet its supply commitments. Adding to Europe’s woes, it has also had to delay vaccinations using AZ’s and J&J’s vaccines over the blood clot concerns. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) concluded that AZ’s vaccine should include a risk of very rare blood clots on its list of side effects (DID, April 8), and at least one EU country, Denmark, has opted not to use the shot out of concern.

The EMA, which has been investigating six cases of blood clots in U.S. patients given J&J’s single-dose vaccine, will announce the conclusion of its Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee today. J&J’s distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is currently on hold in Europe as the safety concerns are being evaluated.

Approximately 104.6 million vaccine doses have been administered in EU and European Economic Area countries as of Monday, while 126.1 million doses have been distributed. Of the distributed doses, approximately 82 million are Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, 29.9 million are AZ vaccines, and 10.9 million are Moderna vaccines. Only 60,000 J&J doses have been delivered so far. — James Miessler