FRANKFURT (Reuters) – A Pfizer executive with a lead role in negotiating a COVID-19 vaccine bulk supply agreement with the European Commission said she “categorically” rules out that the U.S. drugmaker’s chief executive agreed the contract via mobile phone text messages.
“As to whether a contract negotiation such as this contract which you referred to, 1.8 billion doses, was negotiated through an SMS, I can categorically tell you that would not be the case,” Janine Small, president of international developed markets at Pfizer, told the European Parliament’s special committee on COVID-19 on Monday.
She added that such talks involve far too many people on both sides and take far too long to be conducted via mobile phone texts.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Jan Harvey)
