The head of the European Commission has called for the EU’s contract of vaccine with AstraZeneca published, in a growing dispute over the shortfall of supplies. Ursula von der Leyen is currently the head of the European Commission.
The contract signed included binding orders; she said as she spoke to the German radio and asked a plausible reason for the hold-ups. The compact for the vaccine was signed between the EU and AstraZeneca in August.
While UK-Swedish AstraZeneca is blaming the delays on two production plants. These two plants are in the Netherlands and Belgium.
The vaccine produced by them is expected to be approved by the EU Medicines regulator later.
The deal made in August was for 300 million doses of vaccines for the EU to be delivered after governing approval, with a choice of 100 million more.
But EU sources say that they are now expecting only a quarter of the 100 million vaccines, they were hoping to receive till March. There is a shortfall in the vaccines of around 75 million digs.
The EU wants the contract to be published so that it could use it as a backup argument that AstraZeneca is denying on its commitments.
The Eu is being criticised for the slow pace of distribution of vaccines to several of its member countries.
The supplies of other vaccine have also dropped due to production issues. The other vaccine is Pfizer-BioNTech.
Prediction of a ‘vaccine war’
Mrs Von der Leyen said there are binding orders and the terms of the contract is crystal clear. This his her statement from a radio interview on Friday.
Their ‘best effort’ was still valid while it was still unclear whether or not they could develop a vaccine. But that time of confusion is behind us. The vaccine is here.
AstraZeneca has also explicitly assured us in this contract that no other necessities would stop the contract from being met, she adds.
The vaccine maker company is producing its jab at its plants in the UK too. However, there has been no reported difficulty with its deals with the UK.