EU doubles COVID vaccine deal with Pfizer
Pfizer has said it can produce globally up to 1.3 billion doses this year. The new agreement with the EU comes on top of another order for 300 million doses that the bloc agreed with Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech in November.
The move allows EU governments to order new doses from April, von der Leyen said, as the 27-nation bloc races to ramp up the vaccination of its 450 million people. Each recipient of the Pfizer vaccine need two doses to develop maximum protection.
Von der Leyen said 75 million of the additional doses would be delivered in the second quarter of this year, and the rest by the end of 2021.
