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Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has agreed to provide 9 million additional doses of its coronavirus vaccine into the European Union during the first quarter, the bloc’s executive arm said Sunday.
The new target of 40 million doses by the end of March is still only half what the British-Swedish firm had originally aimed for before it declared a shortfall because of production problems, triggering a spat between AstraZeneca and the EU last week.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated following a call with seven vaccine manufacturers Sunday that AstraZeneca will also begin deliveries one week earlier than anticipated and expand its manufacturing capacity in Europe.
“Step forward on vaccines,” tweeted Von der Leyen, who has come under intense pressure within the European Commission’s handling of this vaccine orders in recent days.
The EU is far behind Britain and the USA in getting its population of 450 million vaccinated against the virus. The slow rollout was blamed on a range of national problems in addition to slower authorization of the vaccines and an initial lack of supply.
AstraZeneca’s announcement last week that it would initially provide only 31 million doses to the EU’s 27 member nations because of manufacturing problems set off a fierce dispute between the two sides, with officials in Brussels saying they feared the company was treating the bloc unfairly in comparison to other customers, like the United Kingdom.
On Friday, hours after authorities authorized the vaccine for use across the EU, the commission said it was tightening rules on exports of coronavirus vaccines, sparking an angry response from Britain. The commission has since made clear the new measure won’t limit vaccine shipments produced from the 27-nation bloc into Northern Ireland, a U.K. land that was ensured unhindered cross-border access into the Republic of Ireland under the post-Brexit agreement between Britain and the EU.
EU member states praised the bloc’s executive branch annually for registering numerous deals with vaccine makers, saying the joint purchase using the combined market weight of the entire bloc had ensured a fair distribution for all 27 countries at good prices.
Since that time the mood among many EU citizens toward Brussels has soured, as countries outside the bloc speed ahead in the race to vaccinate their inhabitants.
The British government hasn’t been shy about promoting its comparative vaccine victory, which has helped divert from the fact that the nation remains top of the table for deaths in Europe.
Official figures show 598,389 shots were administered across the U.K. on Saturday, over six times the amount that Germany managed Friday, the last day for which figures were available.
Germany has thus far given at least one dose to 2.2% of its population. Britain has done the same for 13.2% of its own citizens.
Von der Leyen, who had been Germany’s defense minister before taking the post in Brussels, insisted the EU had”made good progress.”
“Of course we have currently got a difficult stage,” she told German public broadcaster ZDF, but added that in the second quarter more vaccine could become accessible as regulators approve additional formulas and additional production capacity goes online.
Pfizer, which developed the first widely tested and accepted coronavirus vaccine together with German firm BioNTech, has said it expects to increase global production this year from 1.3 million doses to 2 billion doses. Tens of millions of these will likely go to the EU.
In a statement, the European Commission said it plans to set up an specialized body to enhance the bloc’s response to health crisis and”provide a more structured approach to pandemic preparedness.”
As part of the effort, together with industry, the EU said it will”fund design and development of vaccines and scale up production in the short and medium term, and to target the variations of COVID-19.”
“The pandemic highlighted that manufacturing capacities are a limiting factor,” it stated. “It is essential to address these challenges.”
