The European Commission is expected to take a decision on the advance purchase of 300 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech on Wednesday, 11 November, during the college’s weekly meeting. If confirmed, this decision would be followed by an official signature in the coming days.
European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer affirmed that this event is independent of the good Phase III clinical trial results communicated by the German-American alliance the previous day (see EUROPE 12598/12). Earlier this week, the two companies had asserted that their candidate vaccine would be 90% “effective” in preventing Covid-19 infections.
The health spokesman indicated that, according to the terms of the contract, Member States would have either 5 days or a longer period of time to indicate whether they wished to participate in this advance reservation. He did not specify which option would be chosen in the case of Pfizer-BioNTech.
Candidate vaccines that are negotiated by the EU on behalf of Member States are subject to a centralised authorisation procedure. This means that it will be up to the European Commission to decide whether or not to authorise the candidate vaccines after they have been evaluated by the European Medicines Agency. All participating Member States will then simultaneously receive the doses negotiated by the European Commission according to population. It will then be up to them to decide—in light of the guidelines given by the European Commission in its vaccination strategy—who to vaccinate first and how (see EUROPE 12582/7 and 12508/4).
Interviewed on the French airwaves on Tuesday morning, environmentalist MEP Yannick Jadot (France) expressed his support for a vaccine that would be made “mandatory”. Nevertheless, that decision belongs to each Member State. “It is not within our mandate to discuss the exacting nature of Covid vaccines; I cannot express a position on behalf of the European Commission”, Sandra Gallina had told MEPs in early September (see EUROPE 12554/4). (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)