GERMAN FIRMS PLAN TO SECURE MILLIONS OF COVID VACCINE DOSES

German companies announced plans to provide millions more COVID-19 vaccine doses on Monday as Chancellor Angela Merkel began a conference with government and industry representatives in a bid to ramp up the country's sluggish vaccination roll-out, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

Pharmaceuticals heavyweight Bayer is to venture into vaccine production by extending an existing partnership with CureVac, which plans to submit its COVID-19 vaccine to regulators in the coming months.

CureVac chief executive Franz-Werner Haas hopes that Bayer's involvement in manufacturing will lead to "several hundred million" doses of his company's drug being made available towards the end of 2021.

Health Minister Jens Spahn noted that the CureVac vaccine provided long-term prospects, for example if people need booster shots later in the year.

"Following discussions with the German government, it has become clear that current manufacturing capacities for vaccines need to be increased, particularly for potential variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus," Stefan Oelrich, president of Bayer's pharmaceuticals division, said in an online conference together with CureVac and government officials.

Bayer has not yet manufactured vaccines but Oelrich insisted it has the "necessary skills and capabilities ... to manufacture CureVac's mRNA-based vaccine." Meanwhile, German vaccine developer BioNTech, which has partnered up with US pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer to deliver its vaccine, has pledged to ramp up deliveries to the European Union by up to 75 million additional doses in the second quarter.

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