REVIEW - EU Angered After COVID-19 Vaccine Developers Announced Delays In Deliveries

BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th January, 2021) The European Union has expressed frustration and demanded answers from drugmakers who have failed to respect contract obligations and announced delays in deliveries of COVID-19 vaccine doses.

At the moment, vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech are approved in the EU, and the bloc also plans to greenlight the use of AstraZeneca's vaccine in the near future.

In mid-January, Pfizer said that it would be delivering fewer doses per week than planned while a production plant in Belgium was being upgraded. At the same time, the US company has said that it would return to its original schedule in late January and will still be able to meet first-quarter targets on vaccine deliveries to the EU. Overall, the bloc has ordered 600 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine.

In addition, the EU ordered 300 million doses from AstraZeneca, with an option to purchase another 100 million, but the UK drugmaker already said that it will not be able to supply as many doses as promised.

The EU is frustrated by the delays as the bloc had paid 2.7 billion Euros ($3.28 billion) to pharmaceutical companies for the rapid development and production of COVID-19 vaccines. The union demanded AstraZeneca deliver all the pre-paid doses and provide a report on the company's activities. The bloc also warned that it could restrict exports of vaccines produced in the EU.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called on vaccine developers to "honour their obligations" set out in the contracts.

The UK drugmaker, even before the approval from the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency, said that it would be able to deliver only half of the promised amount of doses in the first weeks. AstraZeneca also stressed that it was doing everything to bring the vaccine to millions of Europeans as soon as possible.

European Commissioner for Health and food Safety Stella Kyriakides said that the new schedule was not acceptable for the EU, and the bloc "wants to know exactly which doses have been produced by AstraZeneca and where exactly so far and if or to whom they have been delivered".

"In addition, the Commission has [on Monday] proposed to the 27 Member States in the Steering board that an export transparency mechanism will be put in place as soon as possible," Kyriakides said in a statement, adding that AstraZeneca's responses have not been satisfactory so far.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn supported the commission's proposal and said that the EU needs to know "whether and what vaccines are being exported from the EU".

"Only that way we can understand whether our EU contracts with the producers are being served fairly. An obligation to get approval for vaccine exports on the EU level makes sense," Spahn said.

A meeting between the commission and the management of AstraZeneca is scheduled for Wednesday.

REACTIONS FROM HEALTH EXPERTS AND POLITICIANS

Marc Van Ranst, a virology expert at the KU Leuven University in Belgium, said that vaccination was essential as new and more transmissible UK-linked coronavirus variant is actively spreading in many EU countries, including Belgium.

"So vaccination is essential. We need to accelerate and need the third and following vaccines quickly. I hope Pfizer and Moderna are already busy adapting their vaccines to variants if need be, and already vaccinate people with these adapted products, to see if they neutralize the new strains well," Van Ranst told Sputnik.

The virologist also said that it is necessary to get vaccines that are not mRNA types, that trick cells into producing a viral protein that in turn triggers an immune response. Some health experts have voiced concerns about the mRNA method, which is used by Pfizer and Moderna, is too novel to be used safely.

"The European Union has already ordered many doses from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. They are not mRNA type vaccines, and it is urgent to get them. The announcement by AstraZeneca that they will deliver much less is a setback. I hope they will be able to re-organize their production and deliver rapidly," Van Ranst said.

Vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are based on adenovirus vectors, and vaccines of this type are used against a wide variety of pathogens.

Jean-Luc Gala, an epidemiologist at the UCLouvain university in Belgium, told Sputnik that production delays were expected as "commercial promises" were too difficult to fulfill.

"It is really embarrassing that the AstraZeneca vaccine announces that they will only deliver half of the announced doses, as this vaccine is very easy to administer at room temperature. It is understandable that the President of the Commission feels abandoned and angry, when she is already under fire for criticism for Europe's slowness on the vaccines dossier," Gala said.

According to the epidemiologist, the commission's threats regarding the export outside of the EU may indicate that AstraZeneca prioritizes deliveries to the United Kingdom.

"The AstraZeneca vaccine is Britain's 'champion'; Astra is an English firm and the vaccine was developed by the University of Oxford. The British started much earlier and have been vaccinating massively with the AstraZeneca vaccine since December 8, I believe. Are they favored by the firm? Perhaps," Gala said.

The expert also said that delays from Pfizer to the EU may be linked to the company's willingness to avoid setbacks in deliveries to the US and Israel, which "paid up to 40% more for its vaccines to Pfizer and perhaps also to Moderna, in addition to the collaboration in collecting data on the effectiveness of the vaccine for the Pfizer laboratory."

"It may therefore be that any production or logistics problem is automatically shifted to the EU, to avoid delaying deliveries for Israel or the USA which had ordered earlier and are paying more," Gala said.

On the political side, reactions are mixed. Most ruling political parties in Europe blame the laboratories ignoring the responsibilities of the European Commission. Meanwhile, there are also reactions criticizing the commission for its attitude that led the EU to be overtaken in the response to the pandemic by the US, the UK and Israel.

"From the start, the EU had decided that value for money was central. The European Commission wanted a good price above all ... But the real challenge was to conceive the vaccines, then to launch and accelerate production at lightning speed. Money was of subordinate importance; the money lost every day through lockdown was much more than the cost of the vaccines, even if you doubled that price!" Gilles Lebreton, a member of the European Parliament from France's far-right National Rally party, told Sputnik.

Lebreton also said that the EU should have invested more in vaccines and refrain from condemning Pfizer and AstraZeneca, when in reality "this crisis has an internal European cause."

"As for AstraZeneca, an Anglo-Swedish company, or Pfizer and Moderna, American companies, I fear they prefer to focus on their national market, and on other markets deemed to be a priority. The president of the commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, is annoyed as she lost her face. This case proves that EU technocrats carry less weight on the international stage than they think and certainly less than real heads of state," Lebreton added.

According to Lebreton, the COVID-19 vaccination in the EU will be completed eventually, but probably "much later than expected."

EU lawmaker Virginie Joron, also a member of France's National Rally party, condemned the commission's attitude to vaccination and secrecy of EU's contracts with drugmakers.

"On November 24, 2020, the European Commission congratulated itself on having purchased nearly two billion doses of vaccines to cover the entire population of the European Union. It is the EU's most expensive tender since its inception. But curiously, on the strength of this 'success,' the commission keeps these contracts secret," Joron told Sputnik.

According to Joron, the pandemic highlighted issues of Brussels bureaucracy that existed for a long time.

"How and why does the commission negotiate with private laboratories without calls for tenders with non-public criteria? What were the specifications, what were the responses, the price, the deadlines ... Why so much opacity? This lack of transparency is unbearable," Joron said, adding that her party asked these questions to the commission and is awaiting its response.

Joron added that National Rally leader Marine Le Pen has also pointed out that contracts between the bloc and pharmaceutical companies are inaccessible.

"Only some MEPs [members of parliament] had the right to go and look at these contracts without a telephone and without being allowed to take notes! Access is limited and ... the contracts that could be consulted were 80 percent crossed out!" she added.

Joron also said that the commission was currently not discussing possible legal consequences in the event of a breach of a contract.

"This demonstrates the incompetence of the commission, which does not have the necessary expertise to negotiate with the private sector, which has commercial objectives more than public health objectives," she pointed out.

Joron mentioned that there are doubts regarding the effectiveness of the vaccines and on negotiations between the bloc and drugmakers.

Roman Haider, a member of the European Parliament from the Freedom of Austria (FPO) political party, also criticized the commission's "incompetence" during negotiations on vaccines.

"On the one hand, orders are placed with the supplier CureVac [German vaccine developer], although they are still in the testing phase. Then they overhastily buy from AstraZeneca, knowing that, unlike [former US President] Donald Trump or [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson, they are far behind the vaccination plan, and on top of that they grandly announce a vaccination plan that can never work. If anyone has negotiated wrongly here, it is the commission and its president," Haider told Sputnik.

The FPO member also mentioned that some virologists believe that AstraZeneca's vaccine is effective only when it is combined with Russia's Sputnik V.

"Finally, virologists are already of the opinion that the Astra Zeneca active ingredient can only work in combination with Sputnik V, as the virologist Dr Dorothee von Laer described only yesterday in a television interview for the Austrian Broadcasting tv," Haider said.

The lawmaker also said that he is worried that the commission and drugmakers will enter "into a marathon of negotiations" that will bring other serious consequences and called on von der Leyen to prioritize "a cure" from COVID-19 above everything else.