EU vaccine program struggles to speed up

BRUSSELS—Two months after its first vaccine shots, the European Union is still struggling to get its COVID-19 inoculation drive up to speed. EU leaders are meeting Thursday to jump-start the process, fearing that new virus variants might spread faster than Europe's response.

At a video conference, the leaders will look at ways to improve the bloc's vaccine roll out, as the EU's executive arm, the European Commission, presses pharmaceutical companies to respect the terms of their contracts. Officials also want to try to fast-track vaccine authorizations.

More t han 21 milli on coronavirus cases have been recorded and some 515,000 people have died from it in the EU's 27 countries, according to the European Centre for Disease Protection and Control.

Italy, France, Germany and Spain have the most corona virus death sin the EU, although all trail non-EU member Britain, which has Europe's highest virus death toll at over 121,000.

Given the spread of the disease — the Czech prime minister is worried about “a total catastrophe” at overburdened hos pitals, Germany fears the impact of new variants, the Netherlands is seeing arise in cases—there should be little appetite to ease up on travel and other restrictions too soon.

“The epidemiological situation remains serious, and the new variants pose additional challenges. We must therefore up hold tight restrictions while stepping up efforts to accelerate the provision of vaccines,” the leaders will say, according to a draft summit statement seen by The Associated Press.

But public pressure to relax measures is building. The Netherlands has eased some lock down measures in what Prime Minister Mark Rut te called a calculated risk to make the year-long crisis “bearable.” Denmark just allowed high school students to partially return to classes.

In Belgium, Jean-Marc Noll et, head of the franco phone Greens party that is part of the ruling coalition, openly said he no longer followed his own government's limits on social contacts because “I am a human being and human contact is something vital.”

The leaders will say, however, that the crisis is far from over, especially as vaccine production lags.

“We need to urgently accelerate the authorization, production and distribution of vaccines, as well as vaccination. We also need to enhance our surveillance and detection capacity in order to identify variants as early as possible so as to control their spread,” the draft statement said.