Coronavirus: EU buys Moderna 300 million additional doses of its vaccine

BRUSSELS.- The European Union (EU) has agreed with the American laboratory Moderna to purchase 150 million additional doses of its anticovid vaccine for this year and another 150 million by 2022, the European Commission announced today.

“Today, we have guaranteed 300 million additional doses (…). This brings us closer to our goal of ensuring that all Europeans have access as quickly as possible to safe and effective vaccines, ”said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The EU had already signed a first contract with Moderna to obtain 160 million doses this year.

With this contract, the EU has already closed the pre-purchase of a total of 2.6 billion doses of vaccines developed to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

In December 2020, the EU authorized the distribution and application of the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, followed in January by permits to Moderna and then to AstraZeneca.

In addition, the institution has already signed contracts with Sanofi-GSK, Johnson & Johnson and Curevac.

According to the EU, the new contract signed with Moderna “Consider the possibility of donating vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, or redirecting them to other European countries”.

“With a portfolio of up to 2.6 billion doses, we will be able to immunize not only European citizens, but also new neighbors and partners,” Von der Leyen said in a press release.

Por su parte, the comisaria europea de Sanidad, Stella Kyriakides, señaló que la compra de 300 millones de dosis de una vacuna contra el Covid-19 ayudará a “proporcionar acceso a vacunación a los ciudadanos europeos (…) en el curso de this year”.

This contract is “important not only in the short term in the EU but also for our future work to limit the spread of new variants” of the coronavirus, he said.

Variants, concern

For his part, the executive director of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, stressed that the laboratory is already in talks with the EU “on how to prepare for 2022, including attention to potential variants” of the coronavirus.

The laboratory, he added in a note, is “committed to work tirelessly to bring to the market vaccine boosters for the variants concerned”.

So far, some 33 million doses have already been distributed to EU countries and some 22 million people have been vaccinated with them (around seven million have already received two doses), according to Von der Leyen.

In the meantime, the EU has decided to implement a biological defense plan it calls the Hera Incubator that will focus on variants of the coronavirus, such as those identified in the UK, Brazil and South Africa. .

These variants have raised concerns because of their high capacity for contagion and spread, and their possible resistance to vaccines, developed so far.

This project will join forces with the pharmaceutical industry and scientific institutions to prepare the “next phase” of the fight against the pandemic, focused on “the early detection of variants and, if necessary, the rapid production of a second generation of drugs. vaccines, ”he says Von der Leyen.

Agencia AFP

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