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 The plan comes after some of the vaccine candidates ordered by the
EU faced unexpected delays in clinical trials, forcing the bloc and
other wealthy nations to rely for now on shots from fewer
manufacturers than initially planned.
The Pfizer/BioNTech shot, the first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved
by Western drugs regulators, is being rolled out in countries
including Britain and the United States, and is expected to be
approved for use in the EU next week.
The European Commission decided on Tuesday to exercise its option to
buy up to 100 million additional doses under an existing contract
with Pfizer and BioNTech, a spokesman for the EU executive told
Reuters on Thursday. Under the same contract it has already ordered
200 million doses.
"We want to be sure to get more doses because there is big demand,"
the spokesman said.
An EU official said talks were underway over how many of the extra
100 million doses might be taken.
Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment. BioNTech declined
to comment.
Under the EU contract, the two firms have committed to rapidly
deliver 200 million doses after regulatory approval for 15.5 euros
($18.8) apiece, EU officials told Reuters in November.
The extra 100 million doses would be supplied at the same price, but
with the timetable to be negotiated, EU officials said.
Pfizer and BioNTech have said they can produce about 1.3 billion
doses by the end of 2021, but they are trying to expand
manufacturing capacity as global demand surges.
DECLINED ORDER
The discussions to order more Pfizer shots, even before the first
shipments have arrived, underscore the pressure on the EU to secure
more supplies to tackle a pandemic that has already killed 470,000
Europeans and is picking up pace in winter.
That contrasts with EU negotiators' more relaxed stance in the
summer, when the pandemic was waning and the bloc was sealing supply
deals with multiple vaccine makers.
At a meeting with EU diplomats in July, a Commission official said
the EU had declined an offer of 500 million doses from Pfizer and
BioNTech because it was too expensive, an internal EU document seen
by Reuters shows.
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 The Commission and BioNTech
declined to comment on this. Pfizer did not
reply to a request for comment.
With a population of 450 million, the bloc is
now relying only on the 200 million Pfizer shots
it has already ordered for its first
vaccinations, which could start around
Christmas.
In January, the EU is also expected to approve
the shot developed by Moderna, but it has an
initial order of just 80 million doses, with an
option for 80 million more. The Commision this
week has also decided to take up that option
immediately, the EU spokesman said.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses per person.
Pfizer's vaccines for the EU are produced at a plant in Belgium, but
the factory is currently also supplying the United States, Britain
and Canada.
"We have millions of doses ready (..) for distribution, depending on
regulatory approval," a spokesman for the plant told Reuters, when
asked whether shipments to countries outside the EU could
temporarily reduce supplies to the bloc.
In total, the EU has booked nearly 1.3 billion vaccines in deals
with Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca/Oxford,
Sanofi/GSK and CureVac, and has options to buy another 660 million.
But clinical tests of the vaccines being developed by AstraZeneca
and Sanofi have suffered delays, and CureVac has not yet begun
large-scale trials.
Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca could submit applications to EU
regulators by March, the head of the EU drugs regulator said last
week.
($1 = 0.8207 euros)
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; additional
reporting by Michael Erman and Ludwig Burger; editing by Mark
Potter)
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