Today, the European Commission has approved its 7th Advanced Purchase Agreement (APA) with a pharmaceutical company to ensure access to a potential vaccine against COVID-19 in Q4 of 2021 and in 2022.

Under this contract, Member States will be able to purchase up to 100 million doses of the Novavax vaccine, with an option for 100 million additional doses over the course of 2021, 2022, and 2023, once reviewed and approved by EMA as safe and effective. Member States will also be able to donate vaccines to lower and middle-income countries or to re-direct them to other European countries.

Today's contract complements an already broad portfolio of vaccines to be produced in Europe, including the contracts with AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, BioNTech-Pfizer, CureVac, Moderna and the concluded exploratory talks with Valneva. It represents another key step towards ensuring that Europe is well prepared to face the COVID-19 pandemic.

Novavax is a biotechnology company developing next-generation vaccines for serious infectious diseases. Their COVID-19 vaccine is already under rolling review by EMA in view of potential market authorisation.

The Commission has taken a decision to support this vaccine based on a sound scientific assessment, the technology used, the company's experience in vaccine development and its production capacity to supply the whole of the EU.

The Commission presented on 17 June a European strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing and deployment of effective and safe vaccines against COVID-19. In return for the right to buy a specified number of vaccine doses in a given timeframe, the Commission finances part of the upfront costs faced by vaccines producers in the form of Advance Purchase Agreements.

In order to purchase the new vaccines, Member States are allowed to use the REACT-EU package, one of the largest programmes under the new instrument Next Generation EU that continues and extends the crisis response and crisis repair measures.

Image © European Commission, 2021