The United States acquires another 200 million Pfizer vaccines

Pharmaceutical Pfizer announced on Friday that the United States purchased another 200 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, which will be delivered between October this year and April 2022.

This new order brings to 500 million the total doses of this product acquired so far by the United States under the contract initially sealed with Pfizer, which provided for up to 600 million doses.

Separately, the two parties announced last month an agreement whereby Washington will purchase another 500 million doses to donate to countries with fewer resources.

“As a long-term partner of the United States Government in the fight against this pandemic, we are proud of the impact of vaccination efforts in the country. Vaccines have been and continue to be key to protecting lives from this devastating disease, “said Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s president and CEO, in a statement.

According to the company, the new doses will help the United States have broad access to vaccines until next year.

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, which was responsible for developing the vaccine, will deliver 110 million of these new doses before the end of the year and the other 90 million before April 30, 2022.

The contract gives the United States the right to purchase an updated version of the vaccine if it is developed and licensed to deal with new variants of COVID-19.

The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine is one of the main vaccines in the US vaccination campaign and its use is authorized for emergency use in the country for those over 12 years of age.

Vaccination in the country has registered a strong slowdown in recent weeks, while infections have accelerated to the point of rising 53% in the last seven days and hospital admissions for the disease have increased 32%.