EU leaders have voiced their fury after AstraZeneca said it could not meet the demands of a £300m vaccine deal following a weekend of riots in Europe over lockdown restrictions.
The vaccine makers have blamed the EU’s supply chain for their failure to deliver the promised 80million vaccines by the end of March as part of the deal.
AstraZeneca, which developed its shot with Oxford University, said they could only offer 31million vaccines in the first quarter, a cut of 60 per cent.
The European Union’s Health Commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, tonight slammed the cut, warning it was ‘not acceptable’.
It comes after Eindhoven in the Netherlands saw its worst riots in nearly 40 years over the weekend, with Mayor John Jorritsma warning the country was ‘on our way to civil war,’ amid outcry over a new nationwide curfew.
Politicians pushed to tighten lockdown measures across the continent even after a weekend of rioting brought scenes of chaos to the Netherlands and Denmark.
France is due to decide whether to bring in a third national lockdown this week as Prime Minister Jean Castex warned the situation there is ‘worrying’, with Italy‘s top medic also calling for a month-long national shutdown.
The EU has not officially approved the Oxford/AstraZenecca jab yet but it is expected to give its assent on Friday, starting the mass rollout.
The mayor of Eindhoven, the Netherlands, John Jorritsma, warned the country was ‘on our way to civil war,’ following riots at the weekend over a new nationwide curfew
Riots in the Netherlands (pictured) and Denmark come as EU chiefs voiced their fury after AstraZeneca said it would not be able to meet supplies set out in a £300m contract
AstraZeneca is set to face further questions from the EU tonight, as Ms Kyriakides said: ‘The European Union has pre-financed the development of the vaccine and the production and wants to see the return.
‘The European Union 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.
‘These questions were also discussed today in the joint Steering Board of the Commission and the 27 Member States with AstraZeneca.
‘The answers of the company have not been satisfactory so far. That’s why a second meeting is scheduled for tonight.
‘The European Union wants the ordered and pre-financed doses to be delivered as soon as possible. And we want our contract to be fully fulfilled.’
Europe, which was initially praised for its tough response to Covid after most countries went into full lockdowns in March last year, has been hammered by a second wave that a mish-mash of measures has largely failed to control.
Stella Kyriskides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, tonight warned delays at AstraZeneca were ‘not acceptable,’ and has scheduled for a second meeting after warning the vaccine developer’s initial excuses ‘have not been satisfactory’
AstraZeneca has blamed the EU’s supply chain for their failure to deliver the promised 80million vaccines by the end of March
AstraZeneca, which developed its shot with Oxford University, said they could only offer 31million vaccines in the first quarter, a cut of 60 per cent
Those efforts have been complicated by the emergence of new and potentially more-infectious variants of the virus, including in the hard-hit UK, which is now back in full lockdown.
While many countries have announced new measures to try and bring infections down, case numbers have remained stubbornly high in countries such as France, Italy and Germany, causing hospitals to run out of space.
Meanwhile Spain and Portugal have both seen infections soar to record levels after a brief dip over the festive period, putting health services under strain.
The Netherlands, which had become one of Europe’s worst-affected countries with its light-touch lockdown approach, has seen cases fall dramatically in January but remain well above the lows seen during the summer.
As a result and amid fears the UK variant could cause cases to spike, new measures designed to bring the toll down were announced last week, including a 9pm to 4.30am curfew – the country’s first since World War Two.
The prompted protests in 10 cities on Sunday which turned violent, as protesters fought police, looted shops, and trashed police stations.
Europe’s vaccine roll-out was already among the slowest in the world, but has been hit by further problems as France’s Pasteur Institute mothballed its jab on Monday and AstraZeneca cut supplies to the bloc by 60 per cent due to ‘supply issues’
Authorities in Eindhoven announced on Monday that 62 people had been arrested and more are being sought, while officers in Amsterdam said 192 were arrested.
‘It is unacceptable,’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. ‘This has nothing to do with protesting, this is criminal violence and that’s how we’ll treat it.’
‘My city is crying, and so am I,’ Eindhoven Mayor John Jorritsma told media Sunday night. In an emotional impromptu press conference, he called the rioters ‘the scum of the earth’ and added ‘I am afraid that if we continue down this path, we’re on our way to civil war.’
Furious EU officials said they will investigate their claims and have questioned why Britain is not suffering from similar delays in the rollout.
Peter Liese, an EU lawmaker from the same party as Angela Merkel, said: ‘The flimsy justification that there are difficulties in the EU supply chain but not elsewhere does not hold water, as it is of course no problem to get the vaccine from the UK to the continent.
‘AstraZeneca has been contractually obligated to produce since as early as October and they are apparently delivering to other parts of the world, including the UK without delay.’
The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker had received an up-front payment of 336 million euros (£298million) from the EU when they struck a deal in August, an EU official told Reuters.
EU executive Ursula von der Leyen had a call on Monday with AstraZeneca’s chief Pascal Soriot to remind him of the firm’s commitments
The agreement for at least 300million shots was the first signed by the EU to secure Covid vaccines.
Under advance purchase deals sealed during the pandemic, the EU makes down payments to companies to secure doses, with the money expected to be mostly used to expand production capacity.
But AstraZeneca said on Friday: ‘Initial volumes will be lower than originally anticipated due to reduced yields at a manufacturing site within our European supply chain.’
The site in question is a vaccine factory in Belgium run by the drugmaker’s partner Novasep.
A senior EU official said the bloc had a contractual right to check the company’s books to assess production and deliveries.
The agreement for at least 300million shots was the first signed by the EU to secure Covid vaccines
A Commission spokesman said: ‘We expect the company to find solutions and to exploit all possible flexiblities to deliver swiftly.’
EU executive Ursula von der Leyen had a call on Monday with AstraZeneca’s chief Pascal Soriot to remind him of the firm’s commitments, with a second meeting scheduled for the same day.
AstraZeneca was not immediately available to comment on Monday.
The first EU official, who has been directly involved in talks with AstraZeneca, said there were no high expectations about the meeting in which the company will be asked to better explain the delays, although its outcome is still unclear.
Earlier in January, Pfizer, which is currently the largest supplier of COVID-19 vaccines to the EU, announced delays of nearly a month to its shipments, but hours later revised this to say the delays would last only a week.
EU contracts with vaccine makers are confidential, but the EU official did not rule out possible penalties for AstraZeneca, given the large revision to its earlier commitments. However the source did not elaborate on what could trigger the penalties. ‘We are not there yet,’ the official added.
AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot denounced the ‘me first’ approach by some countries to obtaining doses
AstraZeneca’s vaccine is expected to be approved for use in the EU on January 29, with first deliveries expected from February 15.
On Monday, the boss of the pharmaceutical company denounced the ‘me first’ approach by some countries to obtaining doses.
AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot, speaking at a virtual event for the Davos World Economic Forum, also attacked a lack of global preparation for the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
The arrival of ground-breaking Covid-19 vaccines could have been grounds for celebrating, ‘but it unfortunately wasn’t because there was a little bit of ‘me first’ behaviour’, Soriot said.
‘Globally, it is fair to say we could and should have been better prepared for this pandemic,’ he added.
Soriot noted however that ‘things are changing and international collaboration is emerging’ over the coronavirus that has claimed the lives of more than two million people.
‘There are many good examples of tremendous public-private collaboration actually in many countries,’ he said.
Going forward, ‘the first thing to do is to invest in prevention and early detection and early treatment’, Soriot added.
He noted that among the world’s most industrialised countries, only three-percent of health expenditure is spent on prevention.
‘Twenty percent of this 3.0 percent… is spent on immunisation and early detections of disease.
‘So, essentially, we kind of tend to wait for people to become sick to try to address that, as opposed to early detecting (of) disease and preventing it.’