EU plans video summit after doubling supply of Pfizer Covid vaccine

EU leaders are to hold a pandemic video summit on 21 January after the bloc said it had reached a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech for 300m more doses of their Covid-19 vaccine, giving the EU nearly half the firms’ global output for 2021.

The move raised hopes for speedier inoculation across the continent as the European regulator, which this week approved the Moderna shot, said it would authorise six doses from each vial of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, increasing available jabs by 20%.

The Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) also said on Friday it may be able to approve the cheaper AstraZeneca vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford and already cleared by authorities in Britain and India, by the end of January.

The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU had agreed with BioNTech and Pfizer to double the size of its existing 300m-dose contract with a 200m-dose order along with an option for a further 100m.

Quick guide How does the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine work?

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The Pfizer/BioNTech Covid jab is an mRNA vaccine. Essentially, mRNA is a molecule used by living cells to turn the gene sequences in DNA into the proteins that are the building blocks of all their fundamental structures. A segment of DNA gets copied (“transcribed”) into a piece of mRNA, which in turn gets “read” by the cell’s tools for synthesising proteins.

In the case of an mRNA vaccine, the virus’s mRNA is injected into the muscle, and our own cells then read it and synthesise the viral protein. The immune system reacts to these proteins – which can’t by themselves cause disease – just as if they’d been carried in on the whole virus. This generates a protective response that, studies suggest, lasts for some time.

The two first Covid-19 vaccines to announce phase 3 three trial results were mRNA-based. They were first off the blocks because, as soon as the genetic code of Sars-CoV-2 was known – it was published by the Chinese in January 2020 – companies that had been working on this technology were able to start producing the virus’s mRNA. Making conventional vaccines takes much longer.

Adam Finn, professor of paediatrics at the Bristol Children’s Vaccine Centre, University of Bristol

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She said 75m of the extra doses would be delivered by June and the rest by the end of the year. Combined with its Moderna contract, the deal means the EU can now vaccinate 380 million people, Von der Leyen said, more than 80% of its population.

The EU has sealed six vaccine contracts for up to 2bn doses with Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica and CureVac, but only the first two have so far been approved for use in the bloc.

However, the EMA said on Friday it had approved doctors drawing an extra dose from each vial of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, recommending product information for the vaccine be updated to clarify that each vial contains six doses rather than five.

Germany’s health ministry spokesman, Hanno Kautz, said the change, which has been authorised in the US, Britain and other countries, would come into effect immediately, boosting the number of doses already available in the bloc by a fifth.