EU to buy 300 million more doses of Moderna vaccine

The European Union announced Wednesday it has agreed to buy a further 300 million doses of Moderna's vaccine against COVID-19.Amid signs more infectious coronavirus variants are spreading unchecked across Europe, governments and EU leaders scrambled to speed up vaccine efforts that have been hampered by limited supplies and to fund ways to hunt down mutations and counter them.

The news came hours after Pfizer and BioNTech said they had signed a deal to deliver an additional 200 million doses of their vaccine to the bloc.

The EU Commission said its second contract with Moderna provides for an additional purchase of 150 million doses in 2021 and an option to purchase 150 million more doses in 2022.Should the EU have enough supplies by then it will consider donating the vaccine shots to lower and middle-income countries.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her team have come under intense criticism for their handling of the vaccine procurement process.While the 27-nation bloc began vaccinating its 450 million citizens almost two months ago, it still lags far behind Britain, the United States, and others in the share of population reached.

The Brussels-based executive also unveiled plans to better detect the virus variants and speed up the approval of adapted vaccines capable of countering them.As the British variant of the virus looks set to become dominant in the EU, the executive arm said it will inject at least 75 million euros (90 million US dollars) to support genomic sequencing and develop specialised tests for new variants under the HERA Incubator schemeAnother 150 million euros (180 US dollars) will be allocated to research and data exchange.