European Commission buys additional doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine

The European Commission has purchased an additional 150 million Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine doses, bringing its confirmed order commitment to 460 million doses.

The deal also includes an option for the European Commission to acquire other Covid-19 vaccine candidates produced by the company.

Under the agreement terms, the delivery of the company’s updated variant booster vaccine candidates is planned to commence next year.

Moderna stated that the purchase is subject to regulatory approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

The latest deal builds on an existing agreement signed in February this year for 150 million Moderna’s doses.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said: “We appreciate the collaboration with the European Commission for these additional doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, which could be used for primary vaccination, including of children, or possibly as a booster if that becomes necessary to continue to defeat the pandemic.

“We are encouraged by the initial booster data, which reinforce our confidence that our booster strategy should be protective against current variants.

“We will remain proactive as the virus evolves by leveraging the flexibility of our mRNA platform to stay ahead of emerging variants.”

The company also secured a $3.3bn contract modification from the US government for purchase of an additional 200 million filled drug production doses of its SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 vaccine.

The contract brings the total confirmed doses procured by the government to 500 million. Of this, about 110 million doses are expected to be delivered in the fourth quarter of this year and another 90 million will be supplied in the first quarter of next year.

Moderna stated that it has delivered 217 million doses of the vaccine to the US government by 14 June.