The European Commission will approve a purchase contract for Pfizer-BioNTech’s corona vaccine on Wednesday. The spokesman for the Commission has announced this. Belgium then has five days to decide whether to subscribe to the order.
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The European Commission, which is negotiating with various pharmaceutical companies on the purchase of vaccines on behalf of the European member states, already concluded exploratory talks with Pfizer-BioNTech in September. Both parties agreed on 200 million doses, plus an option on an additional 100 million doses.
On Wednesday, the Commission wants to approve the formal purchase contract. It is then up to the member states to indicate whether they wish to subscribe to the agreement. ‘We will normally receive information from the committee on Friday, and then in principle we have five working days to decide whether we also want to order vaccines’, said Minister of Health Frank Vandenbroucke (SP.A) on Tuesday in the Parliament’s Committee on Public Health.
In ‘The agreement’, Vandenbroucke made it clear that such a decision must first be checked with the federal states in the inter-ministerial conference of the ministers of Health.
‘Time needed for approval and production’
The American Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech announced on Monday that interim analyzes of clinical trials show that their vaccine against COVID-19 is 90 percent effective. The vaccine is produced, among other things, in the Pfizer factory in Puurs.
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Vandenbroucke did warn that several steps still need to be taken before a vaccine is effectively available. ‘There is still time needed for approval and for production, these are very complex issues,’ says Vandenbroucke. “All products still have to get approval from the European Medicines Agency.”
In addition, Pfizer promises to have 1.3 billion vaccines produced by the end of 2021. “Two shots are needed per person, so they are good for 650 million people,” Vandenbroucke calculated. “We are at least ten times as many on the planet.”
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