World health chiefs blast EU’s ‘unacceptably slow’ jab rollout

GLOBAL health bosses yesterday berated the EU’s ‘unacceptably slow’ vaccine rollout.

The World Health Organisation voiced its concern about rising cases across the continent with 1.6million new infections and 24,000 deaths recorded last week alone.

Dr Hans Kluge, WHO’s regional director for Europe, said only 10 per cent of Europe’s population has received one dose and only 4 per cent is fully protected with two doses.

Dr Kluge added: ‘The rollout of these vaccines is unacceptably slow.’ The Belgian medic said the EU’s under-fire vaccine programme was ‘prolonging the pandemic’.

‘We must speed up the process by ramping up manufacturing, reducing barriers to administering vaccines, and using every single vial we have in stock, now,’ he added.

Dr Kluge said the bloc would need to apply tough lockdown and social distancing measures ‘to compensate for delayed schedules’ in the delivery of vaccines.

Dr Dorit Nitzan, regional emergency director for the WHO Europe, added: ‘Now the region’s situation is more worrying than we have seen in several months.’

But the UN body praised Britain’s speedier vaccination drive for saving more than 6,000 lives among people over 70 since doses started being administered in December.

Yesterday it was claimed Eurocrats are now trying to get vaccines from the same Indian factory currently withholding British jabs. The EU asked India to allow it to buy 10million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine from the Serum Institute of India, a government official told Reuters.

The EU wants the doses from Serum, the world’s largest vaccine maker, to offset supply shortfalls from AstraZeneca’s European plants and speed up their own rollout.

Any quick approval of the EU request is unlikely, however, with India scrambling to expand its own domestic vaccination drive, said the Indian government official.

Britain is also pressuring India to export the second half of 10million doses it had ordered from Serum, which were meant to arrive this month.

WELCOME to another day of vaccine diplomacy in the perverse looking-glass world of the EU.

...Michel Barnier, the ex-Brexit negotiator, begs Brussels to end its jabs war against the UK. Yet no one sowed more antipathy than him during those torturous talks.

...In an irresponsible fit of pique, France and Germany trash Britain’s perfectly safe AstraZeneca vaccine as a danger (while hoarding millions of doses they won’t use).

...In a propaganda coup for Vladimir Putin they seek to buy unlicensed Russian jabs, leaving their moral authority in shreds.

...The World Health Organisation slams the EU’s ‘unacceptably slow’ vaccine rollout – but had it swiftly challenged China’s lies at the start of the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of victims might not have died.

These haughty institutions boast that they serve noble purposes.

The price of their ignominious failings is being paid in innocent lives.