The European Commission announced on Wednesday 9 November that it had obtained an amendment to the agreement with pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech for the purchase of Comirnaty vaccines against Covid-19. The aim of the agreement is to facilitate the delivery of vaccines to Member States.
Under this agreement, Member States will have an additional delivery option: they will be able to request delivery of vaccines to a centralised warehouse managed by Pfizer.
For the Commission, the introduction of this new delivery option should give Member States more flexibility in managing their vaccine supplies. This option should also provide them with increased storage capacity.
The logistical elements related to the transport of the vaccines between this warehouse and each Member State that has opted for this mode of delivery will have to be agreed between the Member State concerned and the company.
A previous amendment to the contract between the Commission and PfizerBioNTech, announced on 13 May (see EUROPE 12952/24), introduced a rescheduling of vaccine deliveries and the possibility for Member States to obtain delivery of vaccines tailored to certain sub-variants of concern of SARS-CoV-2 from September: BA.1 or BA4. and BA.5. (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)