BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd March, 2021) Incredible delays in the European vaccination campaign have led to frustration in the bloc and prompted another two member states � Slovakia and the Czech Republic � to turn to Russia for coronavirus shots.
Hungary, the "black sheep" of the European Union, was the first to cushion itself against challenges of the centralized EU procurement by early ordering China's Sinovac and Russian Sputnik V vaccine doses.
Last week, the Central European country proudly announced that it will have probably completed its vaccination campaign by Easter, "with Russian and Chinese doses, as well as some Pfizer and Moderna doses delivered late by the European Union."
Now other EU nations follow. On Sunday, Czech President Milos Zeman said he had sent a letter to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, requesting a batch of Sputnik V vaccines. The country would also "gladly accept China's Sinopharm vaccine," he added, noting that "vaccines have no ideology."
On Monday, Slovakia announced that it had bought Russia's Sputnik V and already received the first batch.
Neither Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, nor those of China have received the green light from the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
EU HEALTH MINISTERS IN A DISCREET 'INFORMAL' MEETING
The EU health ministers held an informal videoconference on Monday to "focus on getting vaccines in time and in quantity, addressing the variants, setting a common direction towards safe opening that preserves all sacrifices done so far."
The ministers stressed that they "move along time to pull together, not apart," but held no press conference at the end of the meeting. The ministers obviously do not want to pour more fuel on the fire of frustration over the vaccination campaign.
The United Kingdom has now administered over 20 million vaccines, the equivalent of 28.6 percent of its population. The United States is at 68 million, or 20.4 percent. The EU has painfully reached the 30 million mark, the equivalent of 6.8 percent of its population, three times less than on the other side of the Atlantic and more than four times less than on the other side of the Channel.
As UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson presents a lockdown exit plan that will start in early March, EU countries remain under pressure and are tightening constraints two months after the start of the vaccine rollout.
VACCINATION WORKS AND DRASTICALLY CURBS DEATH RATE
A rapid vaccine rollout has meanwhile proved to be effective in curbing COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, an Israeli study showed.
In Belgium, despite vaccine shortages, COVID-19 deaths have also fallen spectacularly, the trend almost exclusively attributed to the decrease in mortality among those over 85s. Almost all care home residents have been vaccinated, and the effects are now visible in the death figures.
In late January, more than 15 percent of all admitted patients came from care homes, today it is barely 5 percent and keeps going down.
"We see a clear trend in the declining figures. There is a clear and impressive drop of 10-20 deaths per day among the 85+ linked to the vaccination campaign. So using our first scarce vaccines in this vulnerable group seems to have been a good and impactful choice," statistician Bart Mesuere of Ghent University told Sputnik.
In a separate development, the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine has proved to have a "spectacular" impact on preventing serious illness, including among the elderly, a study from Scotland showed.
It came after the EMA and then national regulators recommended against using the AstraZeneca shots for those older 65, citing the lack of data on trials on this age group. Some countries discouraged the use of the vaccine on those above 55.
The new findings led to European politicians backpedaling and trying desperately to attract citizens to vaccination centres. France's vaccines chief Alain Fischer even declared on national tv that "the AstraZeneca jab is one of the best if not the best" for the elderly.
POLITICS IN VACCINE PROCUREMENT & 'MEA CULPA' BY EU
According to Gilles Lebreton, a European Parliament member from France's right-wing National Rally, the European inoculation campaign is suffering setbacks, as the commission was too slow in negotiating vaccine deals and wrongfully set priorities.
"The European Commission was very slow to place its orders to Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the 2 first ones. It was crucial though: the preparation of a specific production line can only be finalized with firm orders. In addition, it also seems that the EU prioritized the price level, a short-sighted reasoning when we know a lockdown's astronomical cost for the economy ... In short, while the campaign has now been launched for two months, it would not have been pointless to hear a mea culpa from European leaders for the endless delays," Lebreton said.
The lawmaker also slammed the very approach of the centralized EU vaccine procurement. According to him, thanks to Brexit, the UK embarked on a much faster and more effective campaign, "which will allow the country to emerge from the constraints well before its former colleagues in the EU."
Roman Haider, a European Parliament member from Austria, echoes the criticism and slams the bloc for dragging politics into vaccine procurement.
"The EU's vaccination campaign can only be described with one word: Disastrous. It is all the more astonishing that the EU and its leadership do not want to admit this disaster in order to recognise the mistake and take countermeasures, and that they are making a political issue out of the vaccine procurement," Haider told Sputnik.
According to the politician, who represents the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), there is no bad or good vaccine.
"As long as the vaccine is effective against the COVID virus, common sense must prevail and it must be made available to the citizens. I am therefore not at all surprised when countries like Hungary order the Chinese vaccine, given the incompetence but also the lack of insight of the EU and its Commission President," he argued.
The "icing on the cake," the lawmaker went on, is Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's idea of introducing immunization passports at a time when the EU suffers from vaccine shortages � a move that arguably threatens to divide the country and whole Europe.
"Apart from the fact that vaccines are needed first to start such a project, this is another deprivation of fundamental rights, in that vaccinated people are allowed to travel and participate in 'normal' life again through a vaccination passport, while others are allowed to continue to make do with the lockdown," Haider stated.
For Tom Vandendriessche, an EU lawmaker from Belgium's Flemish nationalist party, the reason behind the EU's failures in the vaccination is that it is a "technostructure without democratic support."
"If things don't work in the fight against the pandemic, it's not a question of size. Look at the USA which vaccinated 20% of its population; It's a very big structure, but in the United States all citizens feel American and are galvanized when national pride is called upon. Impossible in the European Union! Europeans don't really believe in it," Vandendriessche of the Vlaams Belang party told Sputnik.
The European "technostructure," he argued, is "totally incapable" of negotiating solid contracts or getting its regulator effectively use an emergency procedure, in contrast to the US, the UK and other countries, "which are doing much better than we are."
"No public enthusiasm in the European Union, which is proving incapable of leading our societies and setting the course. It is a systemic problem in the EU and the shameless propaganda, the hollow rhetoric of Presidents Charles Michel or Ursula von der Leyen does not convince anyone," Vandendriessche stated.
As a result, the population is "withdrawing to its national roots, to its government, from which it awaits the rules and the solution," according to the lawmaker.
"And then, 'small is beautiful'; the agility shown by Hungary, which could have finished its vaccination at Easter, and which no one speaks about in the European subsidized press, or by Israel, Serbia and of course Great Britain, clearly show that the size of the Union and its lack of democratic legitimacy, inevitably gives us a sub-optimal result in the vaccination campaign. The EU, a heavy technostructure without legitimacy, prevents Europe from moving forward!" he said.
There is, however, an opinion that the current setbacks may be the last, and Brussels might still be able to provide massively the doses needed to vaccinate the adult population by the end of the summer.
"Tet's look at the present situation; the 3 large pharmaceutical companies which have experienced bad luck and problems with production or logistics, have re-organized, increased their industrial capacity and are preparing to make up for the delay in deliveries. In addition, Johnson & Johnson has just had its vaccine approved by the EMA and is about to start production in Belgium at its Janssen subsidiary. There is a new vaccine in the USA and another in preparation in Germany. The European Medicines Agency is also expected to give the green light for the Russian vaccine shortly," Pierre Vercauteren, a political sciences professor at UCLouvain University in Belgium, told Sputnik.
According to the expert, the situation with dose shortages in large vaccination centres across Europe may "change dramatically within a week, maybe 2, 3 or 4 weeks."
Vercauteren also defended the EMA, which has faced criticism over the allegedly slow authorization process.
"Let's be clear; The European Medicines Agency wants to be rigorous and refuses to rush. We are in new territory with these new types of vaccines. This requires caution. If there were serious side effects within an X timeframe, criticism would mount that the EU had rushed forward," he said.
The professor believes that the ongoing "nervousness" will soon subside, and the delay "will gradually disappear."
