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GreekReporter.comGreek NewsEU Health Commissioner Decries AstraZeneca Vaccine Lag

EU Health Commissioner Decries AstraZeneca Vaccine Lag

EU Health Commissioner Vaccine
Credit: Thijs ter Haar/ CC BY 2.0

EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides on Wednesday decried Astra Zeneca’s recent announcement that it would be providing far less of the coronavirus vaccine to the bloc, saying “The 27 nations of the EU are united that AstraZeneca needs to deliver on its commitments in our agreement.”

The European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety reiterated the EU’s many efforts to resolve the problematic situation concerning the “intention of AstraZeneca to supply considerably fewer doses in the coming weeks than agreed and announced” while speaking at a news conference on Wednesday.

She charged that there had been “insufficient explanations from the company,” and “deep dissatisfaction among the EU Member States” regarding the company’s stated plans to roll out fewer than anticipated doses of its Oxford/Astra Zeneca inoculation.

She said that the nations of the EU are “united that AstraZeneca needs to deliver on its commitments in our agreement.

“Pharmaceutical companies, vaccine developers, have moral, societal and contractual responsibilities, which they need to uphold,” she continued.

Not first come, first served

Kyriakides declared that “we reject the logic of first come, first served”, she said, because, as she pointed out, “there’s no priority clause in the Advance Purchase Agreement.

“We intend to defend the integrity of our investments and the taxpayers’ money that has been invested”, she stated in conclusion.

Plants in the UK are producing the precious serum, but the Pharma giant’s managers are complaining that they have no alternative other than to decrease the number of inoculations sent out, due to unavoidable shortages.

Officials infuriated

Officials in the EU became infuriated after they were told by AstraZeneca that it would not be able to give them the amount of dosages that it had promised for the first quarter of this year.

The shortfalls in production, the firm says, is the fault of their plants in Europe that produce some of the elements of the vaccine. However, EU officials maintain that the pharmaceutical firm should be able to obtain the substances needed for the vaccine.

The drugmaker had a confidentiality clause in its contract to provide the vaccine to the European Union so it is unclear exactly what the numbers are regarding the slowdown in vaccine shipments.

Sixty percent fewer doses

However, Astra Zeneca stated last week that the EU would receive 60% fewer doses than it had promised the bloc between January and March of 2021.

It had been earlier reported that the EU had said that it would not attend a planned meeting with Astra Zeneca on the vaccine shortfall but since that time EU officials have insisted that that is not the case.

Pfizer to collaborate with France’s Sanofi

The American Pharma giant Pfizer, along with its partner, Germany’s BioNTech, is also experiencing issues with the supply chain but is collaborating with France’s Sanofi Laboratories in a bid to produce 125 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine by the end of 2021.

Sanofi stated in a recent announcement that it would allow BioNTech to use its own facilities, located in Frankfurt, Germany, since its own vaccine development program is also lagging.

Pfizer stated that its collaboration with Sanofi is just one way to get around production issues with the inoculation, along with adding suppliers and other manufacturers to its manufacturing process.

Astra Zeneca CEO Pascal Soriot had given an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which apparently had infuriated Kyriakides. Soriot stated that the contract his firm had with the EU called for the company to make what he called its “best effort,” without stipulating exactly how many doses had to be delivered by a set deadline.

“Not correct or acceptable”

Kyriakides lashed out, saying publicly that that representation of the vaccine agreement was “not correct or acceptable,” and urging AstraZeneca to be more “open and transparent” regarding the vaccine delay.

“We signed an advance purchase agreement for a product which at the time did not exist and which still today is not yet authorized and we signed it precisely to ensure that the company builds a manufacturing capacity to produce the vaccine early so that they can deliver a certain volume of doses the day that it is authorized,” she said.

Apparently responding to Soriot’s statement that the UK’s contract with AstraZeneca had been signed three months prior to that signed with the EU, and that that time had been employed to “fix all the glitches we experienced,” Kyriakides shot back “That may work at the neighborhood butcher’s but not in contracts, and not in our advance purchase agreements.”

Problems at Dutch and Belgian plants

The BBC reports that the thorny issue stems from problems occurring at AstraZeneca plants in the Netherlands and Belgium and that naturally, the production should have been immediately shifted to UK plants which were not experiencing such problems.

However, this has not happened — despite the fact that the EU itself contributed taxpayer funds toward the ramping up of production capability in the UK plants.

The bloc’s deal with the British/Swedish Pharma firm called for 300 million doses and an option to purchase 100 million more.

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