The European Union expects to receive more than 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of September from four drugmakers, a document presented to EU leaders on Friday shows.
The document, seen by Reuters and prepared by the European Commission, shows that the EU expects to get 413 million doses in the second quarter of this year, and another 529 million in the July-September period, after receiving 106 million in the first quarter.
The more than 1 billion doses total estimated by the end of September would be sufficient to immunise the entire EU population of 450 million, well beyond the EU’s initial goal of vaccinating at least 70 per cent of its adult population by the end of the summer.
The estimates take into account only vaccines from four drugmakers: Pfizer-BionTech, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Moderna.
They exclude doses from German biotech firm CureVac and French drugmaker Sanofi, which have signed contracts with the EU for hundreds of millions of doses but are struggling to develop their vaccines and get them approved by EU regulators.
Pfizer and BioNTech account for over half of supplies in the second quarter of this year and for nearly 40 per cent of total deliveries in the third quarter, the document said.
The EU expects to receive another 452 million doses in the fourth quarter of the year, including several million from AstraZeneca, even though it had been required to deliver all its 300 million contracted doses by the end of June. – Reuters