European Commission prepares to sign fifth coronavirus vaccine contract

The European Commission will authorise a new contract for the future supply of a covid-19 vaccine, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday.

This contract, with German company CureVac, will be the Commission's fifth advance purchase contract with a pharmaceutical company.

The contract will cover the possible supply of up to 405 million doses, von der Leyen announced.

We continue to work to secure safe & effective vaccines to end the pandemic.

I am glad to announce a new agreement to buy up to 405 million doses of a vaccine produced by the European company @CureVacRNAhttps://t.co/H1gFQH7FAX — Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) November 16, 2020

Since the Commission presented its strategy of centralised negotiations on behalf of the Member States, it has aimed to build up a portfolio of different vaccines. The Commission has already signed advance purchase agreements already concluded with Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Belgium's Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), and Sanofi-GSK. They are all still at the trial stage, and none of them are currently authorised on the European market. This will only happen if a vaccine successfully completes the whole testing process and is deemed sufficiently effective and safe to be authorised for marketing in the EU.

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This will ultimately require a green light from the European Medicines Agency (EMA). However, its evaluation and authorisation procedure are being sped up through a "rolling review", meaning that information from the trials is passed on throughout the procedure rather than in a single dossier at the end of the process. The Commission is also in advanced discussions with the American company Moderna, who earlier today announced that its vaccine was 94.5% effective. Jason Spinks The Brussels Times