ZURICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) -BioNTech and U.S. drugmaker Pfizer will supply 12.5 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccine to the European Union by the end of the year, the German company said on Tuesday.
That is more than half the 20 million doses expected to be delivered to the United States before the end of the year, BioNTech’s chief business officer, Sean Marett, told a briefing.
With two shots administered three weeks apart, the EU deliveries would be enough to vaccinate 6.25 million people as the companies gear up to deliver the first shots following regulatory approval on Monday.
The 27 EU member states that want shots will receive them within five days, Marett told a briefing.
The German biotech company plans to start production in February at its site in Marburg, Germany, chief financial officer Sierk Poetting said in the same briefing.
It has said previously the facility, which it bought in September, would eventually have an annual production capacity up to 750 million doses.
(Reporting by John Miller in Zurich and Patricia Weiss in FrankfurtWriting by Josephine MasonEditing by David Goodman, Kirsten Donovan)
