The pandemic is not over, although the virulence is not the same. As revealed by several international media such as the Financial Times and Politico, several European countries are in negotiations for a common purchase of vaccines with messenger RNA, although it is not clear if these common purchases will arrive quickly enough to face this winter. It is still unknown what the final list of interested countries will be, but the objective is that, given the increase in cases with new hospitalizations and patients in intensive care units, the number of doses available to immunize the population is sufficient.
During the former joint purchases, the European Commission reached bilateral agreements with each company whose details on prices and other conditions were secret. Now the possibility of it being a single contract with different companies opens up.
Currently the only company that maintains a valid contract with the EU is Pfizer. The Community Executive privileged this laboratory when it began to have supply problems with AstraZeneca, which even threatened a virulent court battle. So, he decided to trust Pfizer to save the vaccination campaign because of its reliability in deliveries and because these mRNA antidotes are more effective in dealing with new strains, due to their revolutionary technology.
The SMS scandal
The European Commission ended up expanding its contract with Pfizer to 1.1 billion doses, in a controversial move since it has prevented other laboratories from reaching similar agreements. This has left other laboratories with vaccines already approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in a position of weakness and has even meant that the validation of new ones has been less imperative and has been delayed compared to the agreed schedule, as has been the case. the case of the Spanish Hipra.
This contract with Pfizer was renegotiated so that deliveries could extend until 2027. The controversy is not only limited to the secondary role that this gives to the rest of the pharmaceutical companies but also to the text messages exchanged between the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and the company’s CEO. The Community Executive has refused to disclose these text messages, understanding that these types of communications are not included in European transparency regulations since they are not documents themselves. Even the New York Times has decided to take the president of the European Commission to court for refusing to publish these messages.
When the pandemic broke out, the European Commission was forced to improvise a joint purchasing system that gave European countries greater negotiating power with laboratories and that aimed to avoid tripping. The lessons learned meant that the community club has now strengthened its health competencies with the creation of HERA, the authority in charge of anticipating threats and possible health crises and that would lead the way in these negotiations.
Moderna could enter
The other laboratory that has developed an antidote with the revolutionary messenger RNA technology is Moderna. As revealed by the British newspaper FT, at least eight countries are interested in acquiring doses with a schedule that extends until 2026.
According to the same media, the price of the dose would reach 25 euros, although negotiations are still continuing and the laboratory has not wanted to confirm this information. These data remain secret although this price would fit with the leaks published in the past. Although at first both Pfizer and Moderna opted for cheaper rates, they later raised prices when they demonstrated that their vaccines were more effective in responding to the new strains than the more conventional sera developed by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
Although Brussels had signed an agreement with Moderna to provide vaccines suitable for the Ómicron variant, it was not renewed in August, so any new delivery must now be negotiated.
The European vaccination campaign for the winter is expected to begin this October. Although no European body has yet confirmed these movements to obtain the Moderna vaccine and, in this way, not depend exclusively on the contract already signed with Pfizer, the director of the EMA, Emer Cooke, has highlighted the need for the states Europeans have a varied basket of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, ranging from messenger RNA technology to protein ones, which would also open the door to the one developed by Novavax.
2023-10-02 02:03:54
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