The European Commission has reached an agreement with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German biotechnology company BioNTech to supply 4 million additional doses of their corona vaccine by the end of March. President Ursula von der Leyen announced this on Wednesday.
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The doses are in addition to the deliveries that were already planned and are intended to be used in “corona hotspots” and to keep cross-border traffic possible. “This will help Member States in their efforts to control the spread of new variants,” says von der Leyen.
Commission is concerned
Although the number of people dying from COVID-19 is declining – thanks to the vaccination of the elderly and the vulnerable – the Commission is concerned about the emergence of hotspots and their impact on public health and free movement. In particular, it is the new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that are at the basis of these hotspots. The vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech is extremely suitable for use in that context, because it has been proven to be very effective against all known variants, the Commission argues.
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Response to restrictive measures
It is no secret that the Commission is not pleased with the restrictions imposed on free movement by several Member States, prompted by concerns about high contamination rates in a neighboring country. In a communication, the Commission cites Tyrol (Austria), Nice and the Moselle region (France), Bolzano (Italy) and some parts of Bavaria and Saxony (Germany) as examples of areas where the number of infections and hospitalizations has increased in recent weeks, “which encouraged Member States to take strict measures and in some cases also introduce new border controls ”. Belgium is not mentioned.
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To assist Member States, the Commission has negotiated the supply of 4 million additional doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine. An expansion of the production capacity makes these additional deliveries possible at all. The additional doses are now available for sale to all 27 EU countries. They will be distributed according to population per Member State. This distribution key is also used for the other vaccines.
“To tackle the aggressive variants of the virus and to improve the situation in the hotspots, speed and decisiveness are crucial,” said Commission President von der Leyen.
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