(adds details on companies)
BRUSSELS, May 25 (Reuters) - The European Union expects to
receive over 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of
September from four drugmakers, a document presented to EU
leaders on Friday shows.
The document, seen by Reuters and prepared by the European
Commission, shows that the EU expects to get 413 million doses
in the second quarter of this year, and another 529 million in
the July-September period, after receiving 106 million in the
first quarter.
The over 1 billion doses estimated by the end of September
would be sufficient to immunise the entire EU population of 450
million, well beyond the EU's initial goal of vaccinating at
least 70% of its adult population by the end of the summer.
The estimates take into account only vaccines from four
drugmakers: Pfizer-BionTech, Johnson &
Johnson, AstraZeneca and Moderna.
They exclude doses from German biotech firm CureVac
and French drugmaker Sanofi, which have signed
contracts with the EU for hundreds of millions of doses but are
struggling to develop their vaccines and get them approved by EU
regulators.
Pfizer and BioNTech account for over half of supplies in the
second quarter of this year and for nearly 40% of total
deliveries in the third quarter, the document said.
The EU expects to receive another 452 million doses in the
fourth quarter of the year, including several million from
AstraZeneca, even though it had been required to deliver all its
300 million contracted doses by the end of June.
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold and Francesco Guarascio
@fraguarascio
Editing by John Chalmers and Barbara Lewis)