Photographer: Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg
Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold crisis talks with pharmaceutical executives, regional German leaders and European Commission officials on Monday in an effort to speed up the continent’s stuttering vaccination attempt.
This afternoon’s video call in Berlin comes after Ursula von der Leyen, Commission President, announced AstraZeneca Plc will deliver 9 million additional doses of vaccine to the European Union in the first quarter. The EU has been embroiled in a bitter dispute with the drug maker since AstraZeneca said it is reducing the number of shots delivered to the block due to manufacturing issues.
Von der Leyen said on Twitter late on Sunday that the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker would start deliveries a week ahead of schedule and expand production. The additional doses would bring the total to 40 million, only about half what the EU expected from Astra to March.
Separately, Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE said on Monday that, as previously indicated, they will produce an additional 75 million doses of their vaccine for the EU in the second quarter. The two companies are “back to the original schedule for delivering vaccine doses” to the EU after modifications to a facility in Puurs, Belgium, BioNTech said.
“We are now in talks with additional qualified partners about possible new agreements” to further increase the capacity of our European manufacturing network, Sierk Poetting, BioNTech’s Chief Financial Officer said in an emailed statement.
The EU is lagging behind in the vaccine race
Cumulative doses administered per 100 subjects
Source: Data collected by Bloomberg
Read More: Faced with a vaccination crisis, the EU turned everyone’s enemy
AstraZeneca triggered a crisis on Jan. 22 when it said problems at a factory in Belgium meant deliveries to the EU would be significantly curtailed this quarter. As a result, the bloc, which has come under fire due to the slow rollout of national vaccination programs, said it would limit vaccine exports if drug manufacturers fail to meet delivery targets.
The episode has turned into a guilt that has confronted the 27 countries of the EU with the weight of the pharmaceutical industry, raising fears that a wave of vaccination nationalism could hinder efforts to fight the pandemic. The bloc’s faltering vaccination program and its attempts to correct early mistakes have drawn criticism from many quarters, including companies like AstraZeneca, for fighting the Covid crisis.
Export restrictions could disrupt vaccine supply chains as billions wait to be vaccinated before the spread of mutations makes the virus less vulnerable to the available shots.
“We want 70% of the adult population to be vaccinated by the end of the summer,” von der Leyen said in an interview with German broadcaster ZDF on Sunday. She added that inventories should increase significantly in the second quarter, as Johnson & Johnson and other drug companies overcome early hurdles. A spokesman for Astra declined to comment on the additional deliveries.
Pascal Soriot, Astra’s Chief Executive Officer, said last week that the company was trying to source more supplies from around the world to increase supplies to the EU, adding that “we are working 24/7 to increase this capacity.”
So far, the 27 EU governments have administered only 2.8 doses of vaccine per 100 people, far behind the 14.2 doses in the UK and 9.7 in the US. for long-term orders at home.
The EU’s drug regulator approved the Covid-19 vaccine Friday at AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. It will be the third vaccine available in the EU after injections of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Inc., potentially easing the shot shortage as the EU follows the UK and US on vaccinations.
In the ZDF interview, von der Leyen said she spoke to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said both Astra production sites would supply Europe. “Our enemy is the virus and the pharmaceutical industry is part of the solution,” she said.
Better prepared
Von der Leyen held a video call with chief executives of pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca and Moderna, on Sunday to discuss how vaccines can be deployed, manufactured and approved more quickly in the future.
“The pandemic has made it clear that production capacity is a limiting factor. It is essential to address these challenges, ”the committee said in a statement following the call. It added that “the emergence of worrying variants increases the imminent threat of diminished efficacy of recently approved vaccines.”
Sunday’s discussion focused on the EU’s longer-term health strategy and preparedness. Inspired by early stumbling blocks in curbing the spread of the coronavirus last year, the pursuit of a common approach is to guard against a patchwork of national responses to future health problems.
Also at the meeting were executives from BioNTech, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, CureVac NV and Sanofi, according to the statement.
– With the help of Raymond Colitt, Frank Connelly and Nikos Chrysoloras