BRUSSELS – A senior European Union official said the bloc was slow and unprepared for problems with the launch of the Covid-19 vaccine, but that collective buying was better than nations competing to buy the vaccines.
“We were late to authorize,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We were very optimistic when it came to mass production. And maybe we were very confident that what we asked for would actually be delivered on time, ”she told the European Parliament on Wednesday.
The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, has suffered intense criticism in recent weeks for how it has dealt with contracts on behalf of the 27 EU countries, after several pharmaceutical companies announced production outages that further delay an already slow vaccination campaign in the EU. Europe.
The bloc is behind Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States, with just 3.9 vaccinations per 100 inhabitants, partly because of a slow process of market authorization and irregular logistics. In addition, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer -BioNTech and Moderna vaccine producers have announced delays in delivery to the EU.
Ms. Von der Leyen defended the unprecedented decision by the bloc’s governments to centralize purchases, amid calls from some politicians in her native Germany to order vaccines nationwide.