The healthcare staff is waiting for the vaccine for COVID 19 by AstraZeneca at the CUS University Sports Center in Turin on March 14, 2021 in Turin, Italy.
Stefano Guidi | Getty Images News | Getty Images
LONDON – Six members of the European Union have expressed concern about the way the bloc distributes Covid-19 vaccines after AstraZeneca reduced its delivery targets again.
Austria, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia wrote to the European Commission on Saturday to complain that the jabs are not being delivered proportionally between the 27 countries that make up the European Union.
“If this system were to continue, it would continue to create and exacerbate huge disparities between Member States until this summer,” the heads of state wrote in a letter obtained by CNBC.
It was initially agreed that the vaccines purchased by the EU would be distributed in proportion to the size of a country’s population. But some countries have introduced flexibility into the system so that they can opt for a specific vaccine, depending on price and maintenance conditions.
The European Commission responded to the letter by saying that distribution is a “transparent process” and that it was the Member States’ decision to introduce this flexibility.
“Under this system, if a Member State decides not to assume proportionality allocation, doses are redistributed among the other Member States concerned, “the commission said in a statement.
According to media reports, Bulgaria, for example, opted to receive fewer photos with Pfizer and BioNTech, the most expensive of the vaccines and more of the photos developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. As a result, other EU countries have managed to buy Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines in excess.
The Bulgarian government was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC on Monday.
If we had not had the committee doing this work on behalf of the European Union, the competition and the problems with which you opened this interview (s) would have been greater.
Pascal Donohoe
President of the Eurogroup
Bulgaria and the other signatories are among the EU countries with the lowest number of vaccines received so far, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
They are concerned that, without any change, some EU countries “will be able to reach herd immunity in a few weeks, while others will be far behind,” they said in their letter.
Their complaint stems from the news that AstraZeneca will not meet its delivery targets in the coming months. The Swedish-British pharmaceutical company confirmed to CNBC on Monday that it will deliver 30 million doses to the EU by the end of the first quarter and another 70 million doses in the second quarter.
These figures are below what the block expected to receive.
“Why do I come up with this now, knowing that Austria is a member of the Governing Board, like the other 26 Member States, and has been informed of previous allocations like the others,” said a European official, who declined to comment. be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, CNBC said on Sunday.
This comment suggests that the six countries could have addressed this issue domestically, rather than writing a letter and making it public.
Pascal Donohoe, the Irish finance minister, told CNBC on Monday that if it had not been for the European Commission to monitor the distribution of vaccines, the problems “would have been bigger”.
It is expected to be discussed at the next European Summit later this month.