The European Union Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides on Monday (November 16) said the EU was in talks with Moderna to secure doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate but negotiations had not been wrapped up yet.
“Negotiations with the company are ongoing. We have not yet concluded or signed a contract,” Kyriakides told EU lawmakers in a regular hearing.
The Cypriot commissioner also said the preliminary testing results announced by the U.S. biotech firm were ‘encouraging.’
Moderna said its experimental vaccine was 94.5% effective in preventing COVID-19, based on interim data from a late-stage clinical trial, becoming the second developer to report results that far exceeded expectations, after Pfizer and BioNTech said last week their vaccine candidate was more than 90% effective.
Last week the Commission reached a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech on the supply of their potential COVID-19 vaccine hours after the companies announced their positive results, EU officials said, adding that the timing was a coincidence.
(Reuters)
