On April 23rd, European Commission President Jean-Claude von der Leyen, visiting Pfizer’s Belgian plant with Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Claude De Kroll, said a new contract to order the Coronavirus vaccine from Pfizer and German biotech companies was moving forward and was expected to be finalized in the coming days. The contract will guarantee the EU access to 1.8 billion doses of the vaccine between 2021 and 2023 to deal with possible future variants of the new coronavirus.
Von der Leyen also said the European Medicines Agency had approved a 20 percent increase in production at Pfizer’s plant in Pierce, Belgium. Pfizer CEO Abler also confirmed the same day, from May, the plant will produce 100 million doses of vaccine per month.
Earlier, Pfizer said it would deliver an extra 50 million doses of vaccine to the European Union in the second quarter of this year, raising the total to 250 million doses. To that end, von der Leyen said he was confident that the EU’s target of 70 per cent of adults would be vaccinated by July.
