EU to buy extra 100 mln doses of Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine

The European Union will buy an extra 100 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine, bringing the total from the two firms to 300 million doses, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.

"We decided to take an additional 100 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, which is already being used to vaccinate people across the EU," she said on Twitter.

"We will therefore have 300 million doses of this vaccine, which was assessed as safe and effective," von der Leyen added.

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 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...