EU Leaders: At Least 100 Million Vaccines for Poor Countries

The 27 EU leaders agreed at their summit in Brussels to donate at least 100 million corona vaccines to poor countries by the end of this year.

In their final conclusions, they state that they will speed up the sharing of their vaccines to help countries that are short of injections.

Due to the disappointing deliveries from pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, the EU was initially reluctant to commit to an ambitious donation because its own population must first be vaccinated as soon as possible.

However, with the promised deliveries of Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna, plus in particular future vaccines from CureVac, Sanofi / GSK and Novavax, Member States expect to have enough vaccines to send doses abroad.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had already promised donations at a ‘health summit’ of the G20, the world’s major economies, in Rome on Friday. But she still had to get the heads of government along.

The vaccine manufacturers Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of Janssen in Leiden, have promised in Rome to supply countries with a middle and low income this year and next year about 3.5 billion doses. They do this at cost price or at a discount, they say. Pfizer pledged 2 billion doses, Moderna to 95 million and Johnson & Johnson to 500 million.