500 Million Additional COVID-19 Vaccine Doses at Not-For-Profit Price For Poor Countries

Germany-based BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc. announced plans to expand their agreement with the U.S. government by providing an additional 500 million doses of the companies' mRNA COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty at a not-for-profit price for donation to low- and lower-middle-income countries and the organizations that support them.

This expanded agreement brings the total number of doses to be supplied to the U.S. government for donation to these countries to one billion.

Deliveries of the initial 500 million doses began in August 2021, and the total of one billion doses under the expanded agreement is expected to be delivered by the end of September 2022.

The current plan is to produce these doses in Pfizer's U.S. facilities located in Kalamazoo, MI, Andover, MA, Chesterfield, MO, and McPherson, KS.

Consistent with the initial agreement in June 2021, the U.S. government will allocate doses of the Comirnaty Vaccine to 92 low- and lower-middle-income countries as defined by Gavi's COVAX Advanced Market Commitment and the 55 member states of the African Union.

"BioNTech, Pfizer, and our partners are working day and night to make our vaccine available to people around the world. We are therefore particularly excited and grateful to mark the next milestone in collaboration with the U.S. government, which will further accelerate the delivery of our vaccine to people in the poorest regions," said Ugur Sahin, M.D., CEO and Co-founder of BioNTech, in a related press statement.

"In the short term, we have pledged to deliver at least one billion doses this year and at least one billion doses next year to low- and middle-income countries. In parallel, we are exploring how to build a sustainable mRNA production infrastructure in low-income countries to democratize access to vaccines in the mid-and long term. This applies to both individual production steps and complete manufacturing."

Overall, Pfizer and BioNTech have shipped more than 1.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses worldwide.

The Comirnaty vaccine is based on BioNTech'sproprietary mRNA technology, was developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer. BioNTech is the Marketing Authorization Holder in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the holder of emergency use authorizations or equivalents in the United States (jointly with Pfizer) and other countries.

The U.S. FDA-approved COMIRNATY and the EUA-authorized Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine have the same formulation and can be used interchangeably to provide the COVID-19 vaccination series. Therefore, an individual may be offered either COMIRNATY or the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to prevent COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 betacoronavirus.

Biopharmaceutical New Technologies (BioNTech, Nasdaq: BNTX) is a next-generation immunotherapy company located in Mainz, Germany, pioneering novel therapies for cancer and other serious diseases.