EU Finalises Deal For Up To 1.8 Billion Extra Doses Of Pfizer Covid Vaccine

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the contract is for an initial 900 million jabs between 2021 and 2023

The additional doses are to cover booster shots and the vaccination of children and teenagers.

Kingston Mills, an immunology professor at Trinity College Dublin, says booster doses could be needed every year:

"I think it would become a bit like the flu vaccine in that it's clearly emerging that this virus, the SARS-COVID-2 is mutating quite a bit. A bit more than we thought initially, and the consequences of that is that the virus is escaping immunity generated by the vaccine. So in order to take care of that, what's going to have to happen is people are going to have to be boosted periodically with new versions of the vaccine. That's what happens with the flu."