Australia said Wednesday that the European Union has asked it to withdraw export license applications for AstraZeneca PLC’s Covid-19 vaccine, fueling the dispute with Europe over access to pre-purchased vaccinations, Reuters reports.
The Australian government has blamed the delay of 3.1 million AstraZeneca doses, due to be delivered by the end of March, on a backlog in its own vaccination program.
The European Union on Tuesday denied blocking shipping of the vaccine to Australia and said it is not responsible for AstraZeneca’s failure to honor commitments to other countries.
The dispute underscores the huge shortcomings of the AstraZeneca shot across the EU and the impact of any vaccine export restrictions on countries that had pre-ordered doses.
“The EC is calling for semantics, but at the end of the day we just want what Australians have ordered so we can get more weapons,” the Australian government said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to the EU’s executive branch, the European Union. Commission.
Canberra said the EC requested Australia to withdraw export license applications and AstraZeneca told Canberra that it has not been able to obtain an export license from Europe to ship the pre-purchased doses to Australia.
“The EC has been absolutely clear in their public and private statements that no further doses of (the AstraZeneca vaccine) should be released until their own orders have been fulfilled,” Canberra said.
Australia received an initial shipment of 300,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in late February, which it said was the last. It also has doses of the vaccine from Pfizer Inc. imported.
The AstraZeneca vaccine arriving from Europe was supposed to support the early stages of Australia’s vaccination drive, in addition to 50 million injections of the vaccine supplied locally by CSL Ltd. will be produced.
Australia has recorded just 909 Covid-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic, a small number compared to most countries.
But the vaccination program is behind schedule: only about 670,000 people have been vaccinated against an initial target of 4 million by the end of March.
AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.