A vial of the COVID-19 vaccine from Oxford University / AstraZeneca was seen at Lochee Health Center in Dundee, Scotland, Great Britain on January 4, 2021.
Andy Buchanan | Pool | Reuters
The Covid-19 vaccination campaign in Europe suffered another blow on Friday, when AstraZeneca said that initial deliveries to the region will fall short of the intended volumes because of a production failure.
“Initial volumes will be less than originally anticipated due to reduced yields at a plant within our European supply chain,” said a company spokesman in a written statement, declining to provide details.
The setback hits a European immunization campaign that has already been hampered by a temporary drop in the supply chain for vaccine developers Pfizer and BioNTech, who are renovating a site in Belgium to increase production.
The EU Commission said that Astra informed the EU’s vaccination board of directors about a change in its delivery schedule and that the Commission was working to find out more.
Although BioNTech’s product, as well as a vaccine made by the American biotechnology company Modern, have already been launched after gaining regulatory approval, an EU decision on regulatory approval for the Astra compound is expected in late January.
“We will be supplying tens of millions of doses in February and March to the European Union, as we continue to increase production volumes,” said the British pharmacist, who has a partnership with the University of Oxford. The spokesman did not provide the initial volume target.
The EU struck a deal to buy at least 300 million doses of Astra, with an option of another 100 million, part of the company’s global commitments to supply more than 3 billion doses.
Austrian Health Minister Rudolf Anschober warned AstraZeneca that any delay would be “absolutely unacceptable”, although he did not confirm reports in the Austrian media that the company had told the country that it could only provide 600,000 doses of vaccine in the first quarter, instead of 2 million originally planned.
“The agreed delivery values must be maintained,” Anschober said in a statement after media reports, including the Kurier newspaper and the national news agency APA.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Monday that he and his colleagues in Denmark and Greece would pressure the European Medicines Agency to quickly approve the AstraZeneca vaccine. The Baltic States and the Czech Republic have joined this effort.