EU negotiating boost in Covid-19 doses from Pfizer/BioNTech to 600m

Brussels is negotiating a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech to provide enough Covid-19 vaccine doses to inoculate as much as two-thirds of the bloc's population.

According to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the talks, the new contract would be for 100m doses together with an option for a further 200m.

The report comes amid a slower-than-expected approval process for AstraZeneca and Oxford University's vaccine and some criticism regarding the speed at which the new vaccines are being rolled-out across the Continent.

There had also been increasing concern over just the last two weeks around a new Covid-19 strain first detected in the UK which could be roughly 56% more transmissible than those more prevalent in the rest of Europe.

The detection of a possibly even more worrying strain in South Africa was also a source of concern.

For now vaccines were expected to still be effective against the new strains and those based on mRNA technology, such as that from the Pfizer/BioNTech tandem could be modified quickly to address new strains.

Tuesday's news followed the EU's decision just a week before to increase the size of its order from Pfizer-BioNTech from 200m doses to 300m.

Nonetheless, the EU had already inked deals with a range of manufacturers for approximately 2bn vaccine doses - but most had yet to be approved.

When contacted by Bloomberg, BioNTech boss, Ugur Sahin, said: "We are in talks about whether and how we can provide further vaccine doses from Europe for Europe this year."

A spokesman for the firm reportedly declined to comment on the number of doses being talked about.

In December, Sahin had shown confidence in the companies' ability to boost output adding that the exact amount of any production increase would likely be known in January of February.

As of 1246 GMT, shares of BioNTech were advancing by 5.16% to $85.73, but those of Pfizer had dipped 0.16% to $36.75 in pre-market trading.