Timeline of vaccine development

Figure 3 presents a timeline of events concerning the vaccine development, procurement, and authorisation in the EU. On 17 June 2020, the European Commission released the EU vaccines strategy to accelerate the development, authorisation, manufacturing, and deployment of vaccines against COVID 19. The main driver of progress was the use of Advance Purchase Agreements (APA) to secure the production and delivery of COVID 19 vaccines in the EU. From the first APA that was concluded on 27 August 2020, the first Conditional Market Authorisation (CMA) – granted to Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine on 21 December 2020 –, to the beginning of the vaccination roll-out in the EU on 27 December 2020, it took a mere four months. Such speed is unprecedented considering how much longer such processes took before the pandemic.