APELDOORN, Netherlands (AP) – Jos Bieleveldt took a leap when the 91-year-old Dutchman received a coronavirus vaccine this week. But many think it took too long to arrive.
Almost two months earlier, Britain’s Margaret Keenan, who is now also 91, received her chance to start the UK’s vaccination campaign that has so far outgrown efforts in many European Union countries.
“We depend on what the European Commission says we can and cannot do. As a result, we are at the end of the list, it takes a long time, ”said Bieleveldt of the EU’s executive arm, which, perhaps unfairly, has been criticized for its slow implementation in many of its member states. Onerous regulations and paperwork in some countries and insufficient planning in others also contributed to the delay, as well as a more deliberate authorization process for the photos.
Overall, the 27-nation EU, a collection of many of the world’s richest countries – most with a universal health care system to boot – isn’t doing well compared to countries like Israel and the UK. Even the United States, whose response to the pandemic has been widely criticized and where tens of thousands of vaccine consultations have been canceled due to vaccine shortages, seems to be moving faster.
Although Israel has given at least one injection of a two-dose vaccine to more than 40% of its population and that number in Britain is 10%, the EU’s total is just over 2%.
And it is not just EU citizens who blame the bloc’s door. The criticism also comes from many countries that hoped to see some EU saving liquid drip across their borders.
Amid concerns that the wealthier nations would have consumed far more doses than they needed and that the poorest nations would be left without, the EU was expected to distribute vaccines.
The rocket launch is also testing the bloc’s long-standing commitment to so-called soft power – policies that advance their cause not through the barrel of a gun, but through peaceful means, like the needle of a syringe.
“Today it is more difficult to obtain vaccines than nuclear weapons,” said Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who counted on much more aid from the EU.
Serbia is located in the heart of the Balkan region, where the EU, Russia and even China are looking for a solid base. Helping the Balkan countries with vaccine implantation seemed an area in which Europe, with its medical prowess and willingness to prioritize such cooperation, would have an advantage.
Not so far.
Vucic said weeks ago, when he welcomed 1 million doses of Chinese vaccines, that Serbia had not received “a single dose” of the global COVAX system that aims to obtain affordable vaccines for poor and middle-income countries than the EU has defended and financed.
Instead, Vucic said that Serbia obtained vaccines through agreements with individual countries or producers.
Rubbing salt on the wound, Vucic went to the EU’s social conscience when he said this week that “today’s world is like the Titanic. The rich tried to get the lifeboats just for them … and left the rest. ”Other nations on the southeastern edge of the EU were also critical.
It is a major upheaval just a month ago, when the future of the EU looked very bright. She had just struck a last-minute trade deal with the UK, achieved a massive 1.8 trillion euro pandemic recovery and a general budget deal, and started launching her first COVID-19 vaccines.
“This is a very good way to end this difficult year and finally start to turn the page on COVID-19,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the time.
Last weekend, however, his attitude soured when it became clear that the bloc would be receiving vaccines at a slower pace than agreed upon for its 450 million inhabitants.
AstraZeneca told the EU that of its initial 80 million lot, only 31 million would materialize immediately as soon as their vaccine was approved, probably on Friday. This came as a result of a minor failure in the delivery of Pfizer-BioNTech photos.
Both companies say they are facing operational problems at factories that are temporarily delaying deployment.
Italy is threatening to take legal action against both of them over the delay. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had been bragging that the country’s launch was a great success, especially when the millionth dose was administered on 15 January. But after Pfizer announced a temporary reduction in supply, Italy reduced its administration from around 80,000 doses per day to less than 30,000.
Bulgaria has also criticized pharmaceutical companies, and some of them have asked the government to turn to Russia and China for vaccines.
Hungary is already doing this. “If vaccines don’t come from Brussels, we must get them from elsewhere. Hungarians cannot be allowed to die simply because Brussels is very slow in obtaining vaccines, ”said Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.”
But the offer is not the only thing that stops the EU campaign. The problem is partly that the EU Commission has bet on the wrong horse – and has not received enough doses of the first successful vaccines, such as Pfizer-BioNTech. The commission notes that there was no way of knowing which vaccines would be successful – and which ones would be the first – and so it had to spread its orders across several companies.
EU implementation has also been delayed because the European Medicines Agency took longer than US or UK regulators to authorize its first vaccine. This was intentional, as it ensured that member countries were not held accountable in the event of problems and to give people more confidence that the shot was safe.
But countries also share the blame.
Germany, the European cliché of an organized and orderly nation, was considered extremely needy, with its deployment marked by chaotic bureaucracy and technological failures, as seen on Monday, when thousands of people over 80 in the largest state in the world country were told they would have to wait until February 8 to receive the first vaccines, even with the vast vaccine centers set up before Christmas and empty.
“The speed of our action leaves much to be desired,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel. “The processes often become very bureaucratic and take too long, so we have to work on that.”
It is no different in France, where there is a maze of Kafkaesque rules to obtain consent to vaccinate the elderly.
In the Netherlands, which bet on the easy-to-handle AstraZeneca vaccine being the first available, the authorities had to strive to make new plans for the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, whose ultracold storage requirements make it more complicated.
“We proved that we are not flexible enough to make the change,” said Health Minister Hugo de Jonge.
The Dutch have been particularly criticized for being the last in the EU to start vaccination, more than a week after the first vaccines in the bloc, and have been especially slow to distribute doses to elderly people living at home, such as Bieleveldt, a retiree.
“I’m already playing in additions for my age,” he said. “But I still want to play for a few more years.”
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Casert reported from Brussels. AP journalists across the European Union contributed.
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