By Kate Kelland and Ludwig Burger
LONDON / FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Pfizer and BioNTech have agreed to supply their COVID-19 vaccine for the COVAX vaccine access scheme co-led by the World Health Organization, said two sources familiar with the agreement, the most recent of a series of injections to be included in the project aimed at low-income countries.
The deal is expected to be announced on Friday, according to the sources, who declined to be identified because of the confidentiality of the deal.
Details on the size of the deal or the price per dose that COVAX would pay were not immediately clear, but the sources said the distribution was likely to be relatively small. One source said that the reason for the limited volume is that the doses were intended primarily for healthcare professionals in the countries that COVAX serves.
BioNTech declined to comment, while Pfizer did not respond to requests for comment. Spokesmen for WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance, which co-leads the COVAX scheme, also declined to comment.
WHO senior adviser Bruce Aylward said on Monday that the COVAX scheme was in “very detailed discussions” with Pfizer, which has already committed hundreds of millions of doses this year to several wealthy nations and hopes to be able to include the vaccine in the COVAX “very soon”.
The COVAX scheme is set to begin distributing COVID-19 vaccines to poor and middle-income countries in February.
Ukraine said on Thursday that its first delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine under the COVAX scheme could arrive in the first half of February – with 210,000 doses of the Moderna, Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines.
COVAX said it expects to deliver more than 2 billion doses of COVID-19 worldwide this year. In an updated forecast published on Thursday, he said he planned to deliver about 1.8 billion doses in 2021 to 92 poorer countries, covering about 27% of their populations.
The scheme – led by WHO, the GAVI vaccine alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) – was established last year amid concerns that the poorest nations would lose out while the rich countries struggled to acquire COVID- 19 to inoculate their populations.
COVAX has so far secured future vaccine supplies from AstraZeneca, working with the University of Oxford; the Serum Institute of India (SII), as well as with Sanofi and its partner GSK. It also has a memorandum of understanding on Johnson & Johnson deliveries.
Pfizer’s business would be COVAX’s second, after that with AstraZeneca, which covers a product with regulatory approval in some countries.
Pfizer’s additional commitment comes as frustration grows in European countries with the unexpected cut in supplies from the American pharmaceutical company. Pfizer said last week that it would reduce deliveries until the beginning of February to increase production capacity for a further increase in production.
The Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is the only vaccine so far to have approval from the WHO emergency use list.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that WHO plans to approve several COVID-19 vaccines from Western and Chinese manufacturers in the coming weeks and months, as it aims at rapid implementation in poorer countries.
BioNTech and Pfizer said this month that they intended to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccines this year, up from an earlier target of 1.3 billion.
Its injection is more complicated to transport and store, requiring frozen deep freezers, which may not be practical for poorer countries with hot climates.
(Reporting by Kate Kelland in London and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Editing by Josephine Mason and Hugh Lawson)