SOFIA (Reuters) – Bulgaria’s health minister accused AstraZeneca of failing to meet its delivery schedule for COVID-19 vaccines to the country and demanded the immediate shipment of at least 52,800 doses, which were postponed to March 1.
In a well-written letter, Health Minister Kostadin Angelov said AstraZeneca’s failure to deliver on agreed deliveries was jeopardizing the massive vaccination campaign the Balkan country launched at the end of last week.
The Ministry of Health spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the letter, which was published on Bulgaria’s NOVA television website on Wednesday.
Dozens of Bulgarians have rushed to have an injection since Saturday, improving the country’s vaccination record, which was the worst in the European Union, but also quickly depleting AstraZeneca’s stock of doses.
AstraZeneca told the EU it would cut vaccine deliveries to the 27-member bloc by 60% in the first quarter due to production problems. On Tuesday, an EU official told Reuters that the company expected to deliver less than half the doses it was contracted to deliver to the bloc in the second quarter.
Under an EU scheme, Bulgaria ordered 4.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and arranged to receive them over 7 months, initially hoping to receive 450,000 doses in February, but so far it has only received 117,000 vaccines.
Two deliveries for a total of 142,400 doses, confirmed on February 15, were now being postponed to March 1 and reduced by about two-thirds, the letter said.
In the letter, Angelov demanded the immediate delivery of at least 52,800 promised doses for March 1, saying that the Bulgarian government was ready to arrange air transport at its own expense “tomorrow”.
“I emphasize that the non-compliance with the delivery schedule announced by AstraZeneca jeopardizes the vaccination campaign in Bulgaria,” wrote Angelov.
“With the lack of vaccines that should be delivered by your company, the message that your company sends to the Bulgarian people would sound like this: ‘AstraZeneca took hope out of your hands,'” he said.
(Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)