BRUSSELS (Reuters) – AstraZeneca once again angered the EU by reducing deliveries of COVID-19 vaccines, but it had a boost on Friday when the World Health Organization dismissed fears that prompted countries in Europe and Asia to stop using the drug. vaccine.
The European Union has been much slower to initiate mass vaccination than neighboring Britain due to a slower approval and purchase process and repeated delays in supply.
EU regulators rejected scattered reports of blood clots in people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine, but on Friday Thailand joined a handful of European countries to suspend use of the vaccine – the first and cheapest to be developed and launched in great volume all over the world.
An AstraZeneca document dated March 10, seen by Reuters and shared with EU officials, shows that the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker expects to have delivered 30 million doses to the EU by the end of March – 10 million less than it promised only last month, and only a third of its contractual obligation.
A company spokesman declined to comment, but a person familiar with the situation said there were difficulties with international supply chains.
Industry executives have warned of manufacturing problems as countries try to protect their own supplies of vaccines, ingredients and equipment to manufacture, pack and transport them.
Washington told Brussels that it will not allow AstraZeneca photos taken in the United States to be exported in the near future, Reuters reported on Thursday.
And last week, Italy and Brussels blocked an AstraZeneca vaccine shipment from Italy to Australia, in the first application of a mechanism that allows the EU to refuse export orders from vaccine manufacturers that break EU supply contracts.
The company acknowledged production problems in the EU, but also said it hopes to send part of the production from the United States to the EU.
His contract promises “best reasonable efforts” to meet the EU’s 300 million dose target by the end of June.
“THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH”
Brussels is increasingly frustrated.
“I see efforts, but not ‘best efforts’. This is still not good enough, ”EU industry commissioner Thierry Breton tweeted on Thursday.
Germany said it was talking to Washington about the disappearance of shipments of COVID-19 vaccines from the United States, noting that more than 30 countries, including the United States, were receiving vaccines made in the EU.
The EU program has also been disrupted in the past two weeks with reports of blood clots.
On Thursday, Denmark and Norway and Iceland, non-EU members, suspended the use of the vaccine. Austria and Italy have stopped using specific batches.
But on Friday, WHO said the vaccine was “excellent” and that no causal relationship has been established with blood clots.
“It is very important to understand that, yes, we should continue to use the AstraZeneca vaccine,” said spokeswoman Margaret Harris at a news conference. “Everything we look at is what we always look at: any sign of safety should be investigated.”
AstraZeneca said on Thursday that it found no evidence of an increased risk of deep vein thrombosis in more than 10 million recipient registries.
And the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said on Wednesday that the number of clots reported in people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine was not higher than in the general population.
Bulgaria said it would stop using the vaccine until it received written guidance from the EMA, but German Health Minister Jens Spahn told reporters on Friday that his country was following EMA guidelines.
“Everything we know so far suggests that the benefits of the vaccine, even after each individual case reported, outweigh the risks, and that remains the case,” he said.
Germany, the EU’s most populous country, is expected to receive about 6 million doses of AstraZeneca by the end of April, the document seen by Reuters shows, with France receiving 4.7 million and Italy 4.4 million.
“We are still in a phase of absolute scarcity,” said Spahn.
Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio in Brussels, Thomas Escritt in Berlin and Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia; Written by Kevin Liffey; Gareth Jones Edition