On Wednesday 4 August, the European Commission signed an advance purchase agreement that will guarantee the EU-27 access to the protein-based Covid-19 vaccine NVX-CoV2373 developed by the US company Novavax.
The agreement will allow Member States to purchase up to 100 million doses of the vaccine and then activate an option to purchase an additional 100 million doses by 2023 if they so wish.
However, they will have to wait for the green light from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to launch these procedures. NVX-CoV2373, which has been undergoing a ‘rolling review’ by the EMA for almost 7 months, has not yet been granted marketing authorisation in Europe.
In a press release published at the beginning of August, Novavax stated that it expects to finalise this procedure in the third quarter of 2021.
“In a Phase 3 clinical trial conducted in the United Kingdom with approximately 15,000 adults, NVX-CoV2373 showed an overall efficacy of 89.7%, and more than 96% efficacy against the original strain of the virus”, the company also said.
Seven contracts. The US pharmaceutical company is the seventh to sign an advance purchase agreement with the Commission since the launch of the European Vaccine Strategy (see EUROPE 12503/2).
Of these seven companies, only AstraZeneca, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna have so far obtained marketing authorisation for their vaccines. The evaluation is therefore continuing for Novavax, but also for CureVac and Sanofi-GSK.
The Commission does not exclude signing new contracts in the future and recalls that it concluded exploratory discussions with the company Valneva last January.
“We will continue to support Member States in their efforts to increase [vaccinations]”, Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides assured on Friday 20 August, welcoming the fact that 250 million full vaccinations had been registered in the EU so far. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)