Desperate for delays, Europe seeks more vaccines

BRUSSELS.- In a Europe short of vaccines and overflowing with cash, the voracity for more doses has forced countries to negotiate with each other, evaluate the purchase of doses in Russia and China, and deal with offers from intermediaries that are sometimes real and in other cases downright fraudulent.

Amid the growing outrage over the slow vaccination against the coronavirus, which has left the European Union (EU) far behind other rich countries, many EU states are starting to consider alternatives beyond the bloc’s joint acquisition strategy, which is increasingly disappointing.

Thus arises an immense black market – Or at least gray -, with offers from all over the world, and sometimes at exorbitant prices. According to the first results of an investigation by the EU anti-fraud body, governments in the region have received offers from sellers who have promised 460 million doses.

While waiting for vaccine deliveries from the EU, some countries in the bloc are also trying to negotiate directly with the laboratories, but without losing sight of the “free vaccine market” disorder, whose sellers and products do not offer guarantees.

Last year, the EU was slow to buy massive doses from labs, acting weeks after the US, Britain and a handful of other countries. This year, with slower-than-expected vaccine production, the EU has uncovered its Achilles heel and countries have launched their vaccination campaigns on the loose.

According to EU governments and the Our World in Data database, at the start of last week, around 5% of the EU’s 450 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared to around 14% in the US, 27% in Britain and 53% in Israel.

The stumbling blocks of the richest bloc of countries on the planet have put an end to the politicization of the vaccine. The most frustrating thing for many is to see that a former EU member, like Britain, is pushing ahead with its vaccination and reopening plans, while countries in the bloc remain confined due to a further rise in super-contagious variants and that their savings sink deeper into recession.

In the last months of 2020, several countries chose to give up part of the quota of vaccines purchased by the EU that corresponded to them according to the population. These measures have mainly occurred in the less wealthy countries of the bloc, with less infrastructure and populations that are difficult to reach. These countries have sold their quotas of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which require ultra-cold storage, and have decided to rely mainly on the AstraZeneca vaccine., which is cheaper and easier to handle.

But it happened that AstraZeneca had to cut planned deliveries to EU due to production issues. And because some executives questioned the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine in older groups, which were under-represented in clinical trials, many European citizens are wary of this vaccine, despite expert approval. Pfizer has also delayed deliveries.

In any country, the decision to forgo vaccine doses is a political dynamite, and the complaints were immediate. Poland has waived part of its generous Moderna slice scheduled for the end of this year, arguing it would be too late to make a big difference, given it had more than enough vaccine deliveries since then. AstraZeneca and, perhaps at that time, Johnson & Johnson as well.

German official said his country had obtained 50 million doses of Moderna, a figure much higher than the amount that would correspond to it based on the EU dose allocation on a population basis. EU officials have confirmed that Germany has obtained at least some additional doses from other member states.

Germany also sealed a controversy separate agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech for 30 million additional doses to be delivered during 2021, sparking outrage in many parts of the EU as the richest nation in the EU, which is said to have led the bloc’s collective strategy, has come to a halt.

The fear of the EU is that these side agreements undermine collective purchasing power and compromise delivery times to the 27 countries of the bloc.

The European Commission has made it clear that EU countries should not seal independent agreements with the same laboratories with which they negotiated contracts for the block.

In a worrying twist, senior government officials and even leaders have received dozens of unsolicited offers of vaccines. And according to Ville Itala, director of the European Anti-Fraud Office, few of these sellers are legitimate operators. “They offer huge amounts of vaccines. So far there are 460 million doses amounting to 3 billion euros, ”Itala said in an interview last week. “So it’s not something small, it’s a gigantic business that keeps growing.”

Itala said he took the unusual step of revealing this information, just a week after his agency’s investigation concluded, as the potential risks to Europe were enormous. But offers for vaccines keep coming and authorities say they are ready to look at them one by one before rejecting them.

Itala said that most intermediaries offer doses of AstraZeneca. The company said it only enters into agreements with governments or multilateral organizations, such as the Covax vaccine fair sharing initiative. But that does not rule out the possibility that countries may not be able to resell them to third parties under the table.

“AstraZeneca has not authorized any vaccine shipments outside the current contract with the EU”said a spokesperson for the company. “No private actor should be involved in the sale or distribution of the vaccine in Europe.”

While many offers are clearly fraudulent, others could be legitimate, even though the asking prices are astronomical.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff

Translation of Ignacio Mackinze

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