BERLIN (AP) – Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has agreed to deliver an additional 9 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine to the European Union in the first quarter, the bloc’s executive arm said on Sunday.
The new target of 40 million doses by the end of March is still only half of the British-Swedish company’s initial target before announcing a deficiency due to production problems, triggering a spit between AstraZeneca and the EU last week.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday, following a call with seven vaccine manufacturers, that AstraZeneca would also start deliveries a week earlier than scheduled and expand its production capacity in Europe.
“Moving forward with vaccines,” Von der Leyen wrote on Twitter, under intense pressure from the European Commission’s management of vaccination orders in recent days.
The EU is far from the UK and the United States in terms of vaccination against the virus of its population of 450 million. The slow launch has been blamed on a number of national problems, as well as slower vaccine clearance and an initial shortage of supplies.
AstraZeneca’s announcement last week that it would initially deliver only 31 million doses to the 27 EU member states due to production problems has sparked a heated dispute between the two sides, with Brussels officials saying they fear the company is treating the bloc properly. unjust compared to other customers, such as the United Kingdom.
On Friday, hours after regulators authorized the use of the vaccine across the EU, the commission said the tightening of export rules of coronavirus vaccines, provoking an angry response from the UK. The Commission has since stated that the new measure will not restrict shipments of vaccines produced in the 27-nation bloc to Northern Ireland, a UK territory that has been guaranteed unhindered cross-border access to the Republic of Ireland under the post-Brexit agreement between the United Kingdom. and the United Kingdom. European Union.
EU member states praised the bloc’s executive power last year for signing numerous agreements with vaccine manufacturers, saying the joint acquisition using the combined market weight of the whole bloc ensured a fair distribution for all 27 countries at good prices. .
Since then, the mood of many EU citizens towards Brussels has worsened, as countries outside the bloc advance in the vaccination race of their population.
The British government did not shy away from promoting the relative success of the vaccine, which helped to divert attention from the fact that the country remains at the top of the ranking of deaths in Europe.
Official figures show that 598,389 photos were taken in the UK on Saturday, more than six times the number managed by Germany on Friday, the last day for which the figures were available.
Germany has so far given at least one dose to 2.2% of its population. The United Kingdom has done the same for 13.2% of its citizens.
In response, Chancellor Angela Merkel summoned state governors on Monday to discuss what the German media described as “a vaccination disaster. ”
Von der Leyen, who was Germany’s defense minister before taking office in Brussels, insisted the EU had “made good progress”.
“Of course we are currently in a difficult phase,” she told German public broadcaster ZDF, but added that more vaccines would be available in the second quarter as regulators approved additional formulas and additional production capacity. be online.
Pfizer, which has developed the first widely tested coronavirus vaccine and approved it with German firm BioNTech, said it expects to increase global production this year from 1.3 million doses to 2 billion doses. Tens of millions of them are likely to go to the EU.
In a statement, the European Commission said it intends to set up a specialized body to improve the bloc’s response to health emergencies and “provide a more structured approach to pandemic preparedness”.
As part of the effort, together with industry, the EU said it would “fund the design and development of vaccines and expand production in the short and medium term and also target COVID-19 variants”.
“The pandemic has shown that manufacturing capacity is a limiting factor,” he said. “It is essential that we address these challenges.”
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