The European Union has announced that it formally authorized a contract with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Pfizer has developed a vaccine that boasts a 90% effectiveness rate and has maintained health check clearances throughout Phase 1, 2, and 3 trials. The vaccine was developed in collaboration with German lab BioNTech. The EU has entered a contract in which it will receive 300 million doses of the vaccine if it passes through the approval process.
The EU contract guarantees a supply of 200 million doses, with the ability to acquire an additional 100 million doses should the vaccine prove effective in practice. The vaccine uses a technology called messenger RNA that has never been implemented before and sparks an immune response in those injected. Pfizer and BioNTech plan to increase the vaccine’s production, aiming to produce up to 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.
Read More: EU agrees to buy 300 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine