By Colin Packham
CANBERRA / BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union on Tuesday denied blocking shipments of 3.1 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to Australia, while the bloc intensifies scrutiny of vaccine exports to deal with scarcity.
An Australian government source told Reuters that the EU blocked 3.1 million shots and that the country had little hope of receiving the promised 400,000 remaining doses in time.
The dispute highlights the massive deficiency of AstraZeneca fired across the EU and complicates Australia’s vaccination campaign, which is more than 80% behind the original schedule.
“We cannot confirm any new decision to block vaccine exports to Australia or any other country,” a European Commission spokesman told a news conference.
A Commission spokeswoman said the bloc rejected only one of the 491 export orders for the COVID-19 vaccine, as it increased export transparency in late January, but added that seven orders were currently being considered – and therefore, shipments were suspended until a decision was made.
She declined to say whether a new shipment to Australia was among those being evaluated. But an EU official said there were no export orders to Australia under review.
The only rejected order out of nearly 500 received so far was a shipment of 250,000 doses to Australia in March. From January 30 to March 24, the EU exported 1 million doses to Australia, the Commission said in a press release.
The EU has repeatedly said that AstraZeneca may not be allowed to export from the EU until it fulfills its contractual obligations with the bloc, a position that has led the company to refrain from submitting some export orders.
AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
With vaccine implementations far short of those in Britain and the United States, the EU stepped up its supervision of vaccine exports last month, giving it greater leeway to block shipments. “They have blocked 3.1 million shots so far,” said the Australian government source, adding that he had received only 300,000 shots and another 400,000 shots were scheduled to arrive by the end of April.
“We have not lost hope, but we have stopped counting them in our expected supplies,” said the source. The person declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak on the subject.
CALENDAR WELL BEHIND
Until Tuesday, Australia had confirmed only the blocking of 250,000 doses of AstraZeneca from the EU, which Canberra then said would not delay its inoculation schedule.
An EU official said he was not responsible for AstraZeneca’s failure to deliver on commitments to other countries. The pharmaceutical company plans to deliver only 100 million doses to the bloc by the end of June, out of the 300 million it had promised.
It is unclear whether Australia plans to ask Britain or the United States to send doses of AstraZeneca.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday that missing shipments were responsible for not meeting the vaccination schedule. “In early January, we predicted that we would have 3.1 million vaccines. These vaccines were not supplied to Australia,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra. “That is the reason.”
The AstraZeneca vaccine from Europe should support the early stages of Australia’s vaccination campaign, complementing 50 million injections of the vaccine that will be produced locally by CSL Ltd.
Australia has registered only 909 coronavirus deaths since the pandemic began and said on Tuesday it would launch a quarantine bubble and COVID test with New Zealand this month after eradicating the virus with the closure of the borders last year.
Australia’s vaccine program is delayed, having started much later than some other countries due to the low number of cases, and Astrazeneca’s blockages make it difficult to accelerate the pace.
Only about 670,000 people were vaccinated against an initial target of 4 million by the end of March.
While the government blamed the slow launch for Europe’s supply problems, Australian state governments have also complained about slower-than-expected distribution and a lack of certainty about supply.
(Reporting by Colin Packham and Renju Jose; additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing by Miyoung Kim, Nick Macfie and John Stonestreet)