Additional Relevant Details The information on the ongoing talks was shared by the European Commission, the EU executive arm, with EU health ministers at a meeting in Berlin on Thursday.

The most advanced EU talks appear to be those with Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi, confirming a Reuters report in June, because the EU is already discussing details on the number of doses needed.With U.S. giant Johnson & Johnson, the European Union is negotiating a supply of 200 million doses of its potential vaccine, the sources said, adding that additional supplies may also be available.

The bloc is also planning to secure in the second half of next year 300 million doses of the potential vaccine developed by France’s Sanofi in cooperation with British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L), the sources said.Asked about the negotiations, Sanofi told Reuters it was in “advanced talks with the EU for the delivery of 300 million doses”.Negotiations were also ongoing, sources said, with U.S. firm Moderna, whose experimental COVID-19 vaccine showed this week it was safe and provoked immune responses in all 45 healthy volunteers in an ongoing early-stage study, according to U.S. researchers.The bloc is also in talks with German biotechnology firms BioNtech and CureVac to buy in advance their potential vaccines, the sources said. Both firms, which have already been offered EU funds to develop their shots, declined to comment.BioNtech is developing a potential COVID-19 vaccine in cooperation with U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (PFE.N), for which 100 million doses could be available by the end of the year.CureVac is a pioneer in the so-called messenger RNA approach, which is also being pursued by BioNTech and Moderna.