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The European Commission has placed its first official order for a coronavirus vaccine with a deal to buy 300 million doses of AstraZeneca’s experimental shot, officials said Friday. The body plans to donate vaccines to lower- and middle-income countries through its agreement with the British drugmaker, which gives it the option to buy another 100 …
The European Commission has placed its first official order for a coronavirus vaccine with a deal to buy 300 million doses of AstraZeneca’s experimental shot, officials said Friday.
The body plans to donate vaccines to lower- and middle-income countries through its agreement with the British drugmaker, which gives it the option to buy another 100 million doses on behalf of European Union states, officials said.
The commission is also in talks to order a combined 500 million doses of two other potential vaccines, officials said: one from Johnson & Johnson, and a joint effort between Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline. All three candidates still have to complete final clinical trials to prove they’re safe and effective against COVID-19.
“We will continue to work tirelessly to bring more candidates into a broad EU vaccines portfolio,” Stella Kyriakides, Europe’s commissioner for health and food safety, said in a statement. “A safe and effective vaccine remains the surest exit strategy to protect our citizens and the rest of the world from the coronavirus.”
AstraZeneca has also inked an up to $1.2 billion deal to provide the US government with 300 million doses of the shot that it’s developed with the University of Oxford.
European officials did not reveal the price of their order, but they said the money will come from a 2.7 billion euro (about $3.2 billion) emergency fund that aims to battle the pandemic.
“With production in our European supply chain soon to be started, we hope to make the vaccine available widely and rapidly, with the first doses to be delivered by the end of 2020,” AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said in a statement.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine is one of 29 candidates going through clinical studies around the world, according to the World Health Organization. The Cambridge, UK-based company has started a crucial Phase 3 trial of the vaccine in Brazil and plans to kick off a similar late-stage study in the US this month.
AstraZeneca’s US-listed shares were down 0.4 percent in premarket trading Friday at $55.55 as of 7:26 a.m.
