EU cornering more vaccines for bloc
As poor nations struggle, Brussels seeks double the supply; eyes further ban on jab exports
BRUSSELS—The EU said Monday it is working to secure a big increase in COVID-19 vaccine supplies from next month to recover from a disappointingly slow start to its jabs rollout.
The urgency of the push was underlined by Italy announcing that its toll of virus deaths had topped 100,000.
Meanwhile, former EU member Britain reopened its schools as a tough lockdown and successful first-jabs program brought daily infection numbers down 90 percent from where they were two months ago.
Signs of economic revival in the United States—where vaccinated people can now mingle unmasked per the latest medical recommendation—also point to the world’s wealthier countries aiming for a mid-year bounceback from the pandemic.
But people in other countries and territories are struggling, including in Syria where President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma tested positive for COVID-19.
300M doses injected
Around the world, almost 305 million vaccine doses have been injected, according to an AFP count at 1200 GMT Monday, with the United States in the lead in absolute terms at 90 million doses.
Mounting public pressure to have vaccines unlock a semblance of prepandemic life is being felt by Europe’s leaders.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen told a German newspaper, Stuttgarter Nachrichten, that vaccine deliveries to the European Union should double between April and June compared to the first three months of 2021, to 300 million doses.
Even though that is 100 million fewer than projected in a February summit of EU leaders, she stands by her goal to see 70 percent of adults in the EU fully vaccinated by mid-September.
But von der Leyen told another German paper, Wirtschaftswoche, that to get there the bloc could halt further vaccine exports, after Italy last week stopped an AstraZeneca shipment to Australia.
“That was not a one-off,” she warned.
That ban was under an EU mechanism created in January to prevent vaccine-makers under contract with the bloc underdelivering to Europe while meeting commitments elsewhere.
Feeling the heat
Von der Leyen has felt the heat from a failed first-quarter rollout that depended largely on Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca, which supplied just a fraction of the 100 million doses it was contracted to deliver to the EU.
Over this year and next, the EU has prepurchased 2.6 billion doses—more than enough for the EU’s total 450 million population, with the extra eventually to go to poorer neighboring and African countries.
The portfolio covers the three vaccines currently authorized for the EU, from BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, as well as ones likely to get approval— Johnson & Johnson, Curevac and Sanofi-GSK—and candidate vaccines from Novavax and Valneva.
Yet according to the last official figures from Feb. 26, EU countries have received 51.5 million doses, and administered 29.2 million of them, roughly two-thirds as first jabs and onethird as second jabs.
After initially restricting AstraZeneca’s shot to under-65s, Italy on Monday authorized it for all adults, following in the steps of France, Germany, Belgium and Denmark.
Romania also dropped advice that the AstraZeneca shot should only be given to under-55s.