The European Commission on Tuesday authorised a new contract to secure another Covid-19 vaccine for Europeans under which the EU will buy up to 405 million doses of a vaccine produced by the European company CureVac.

Under the contract, the initial delivery would include 225 million doses on behalf of all EU member states, and an additional 180 million doses will be delivered if the vaccine has proved safe and effective against Covid-19.

This is the fifth contract with a pharmaceutical company for the EU’s COVID-19 vaccine portfolio. The EC added that they “are working on a sixth one, with Moderna.”

The previous three contracts are with AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV and BioNtech-Pfizer.

Earlier this year, the EC provided funding to CureVac together with the European Investment Bank. On 6 July, the company, based in Germany, and the EIB concluded a €75 million for development and mass production of vaccines, including the vaccination against Covid-19.

This past Saturday, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that Croatia, in cooperation with the European Union, had ordered COVID vaccines from several companies, and the delivery of the reserved doses could be expected in the country as soon as the vaccinations were registered.

For instance, the European Commission and AstraZeneca have concluded such an agreement for the delivery of 300 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine for the whole EU, and Croatia has ordered 2.7 million doses from that company.

Sanofi is supposed to provide the EU with 300 million doses, and the distribution of its vaccines across the EU member states will be defined in December, Plenkovic told the news conference.

The EU is going to purchase 200 million doses from Janssen Pharmaceutica owned by Johnson & Johnson, and Croatia has booked 900,000 doses.

Finally, 200 million doses of the vaccine developed by the Pfizer & BioNTech have been booked for the EU plus an additional 100 million doses, and Croatia has reserved a million doses of this vaccine.