EU seeks to secure vaccine materials from US

Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine (Photo: AFP/VNA)

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton -- Brussels' pointman on vaccine production -- will confer with White House Covid-19 coordinator Jeffrey Zients, the source familiar with the talks told AFP.

The EU and US want to "work together in a coordinated way to avoid bottlenecks" for European vaccine producers, the source said.

The European Commission is planning to extend to June a vaccine export transparency mechanism, which will expire in March. The move came after Italy refused to permit 250,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to Australia through this mechanism.