250mn Europeans to be vaccinated with COMIRNATY® by the end of 2021

The European Commission (EC) has signed an agreement with Pfizer and BioNTech for an additional supply of 200 million doses of  COMIRNATY® (BNT162b2), the companies’ COVID-19 Vaccine. The doses are expected to be delivered in 2021, with an estimated 75 million to be supplied in the second quarter.

Between the new agreement and the original 300 million doses committed in an earlier deal, enough doses of COMIRNATY have been secured for at least 250 million Europeans to be vaccinated by the end of 2021. Under the new deal, the EC was also given the option to request up to 100 million more doses.

“We recognise that more people must be vaccinated as soon as possible to help defeat this virus and control the global pandemic. We are working relentlessly to support the further roll-out of vaccination campaigns in Europe and worldwide by expanding manufacturing capacity,” commented Dr Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer. “With this new agreement with the European Commission, we now expect to deliver enough doses to vaccinate at least 250 million Europeans before the end of the year.”

“Broad access to well-tolerated and highly efficacious vaccines is essential to halt the pandemic. We have taken additional steps to expand our manufacturing capacity to two billion doses in 2021,” added Dr Ugur Sahin, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of BioNTech. “We will initiate production at our Marburg facility this month and have strengthened our manufacturing network with additional partners. We are continuing to evaluate, together with governments, authorities and partners at all levels, how we might address an even higher future supply requirement for our vaccines.”

COMIRNATY is being produced in BioNTech’s and Pfizer’s manufacturing sites in Europe. The distribution of the vaccine by the EU member states will continue to be determined according to the populations identified in EU and national guidance. Assuming continuous process improvements, expansion at current facilities and adding new suppliers and contract manufacturers, as well as the updated six-dose labelling, Pfizer and BioNTech said they aim to manufacture approximately two billion doses by the end of 2021.