Is AstraZeneca lying? Europe is furious with the lab and suspects it has sold its vaccines to other countries

Anger monumental to the European Commission. Europeans are beginning to suspect that the British pharmaceutical industry AstraZeneca, to which they advanced hundreds of millions of euros as a down payment to make sure they had no supply issues and from whom they purchased 400 million doses against the coronavirus (100 million doses only for this first quarter of the year), they could sell these vaccines In other countries.

European governments have been complaining to the European Commission for days about receiving fewer vaccines than expected (from Pfizer / BioNTech, which promises that cannot produce faster) and waited like May to water those of AstraZeneca, which do not finish arriving. Brussels pressed the pharmacist and, on Monday evening, organized a meeting with officials in Brussels, including Pascal Soriot, your maximum responsible.

The meeting ended with EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides of Cyprus demanding that AstraZeneca tell her “what dose she produced, where she produced it” and, most importantly, “To whom were they delivered”. Without saying it out loud, Brussels thinks that the cruising speed that the British are vaccinating, more than triple that of Europeans, is due to the fact that they have no problem vaccine delivery precisely thanks to AstraZeneca doses.

The European Commission is feeling pressure from national governments, which have had to slow down the pace of vaccinations because they do not receive enough doses. A country like Spain, which manages 200,000 a day, had to stop and it no longer reaches 100,000 a day.

A pace that will not allow you to meet your expectations. Out of six million people vaccinated at the end of March, it no longer even aspires to 2.5 million today. Spain was supposed to receive 10 million doses of AstraZeneca between January and March and will not even reach four million.

Tuesday night’s meeting was suspended for a few hours so that company officials collect information. At the time, Commissioner Kyriakides organized a press conference (virtual, like almost all of them in Brussels since last March) to charge against the company and threatening to use “all available means” to enforce what has been signed. Countries like Italy they are already investigating judicially when signing.

The promised vaccine

Everyone was waiting for the AstraZeneca vaccine because it’s much cheaper (almost ten times less than those from Pfizer or Moderna), easier to produce and manage because it does not need to be stored frozen at extremely low temperatures.

And while the pharmaceutical company repeats to European governments that has “production problems” and he can’t send them more doses, he doesn’t seem to have the same UK government supply problems even though it was the European Commission and not London that paid in advance.

Kyriakides demanded Monday evening that contracts be “fully” respected and announced that from Tuesday Europe monitor the export of vaccines. Any vaccine vial leaving European territory will require prior authorization by the European Commission, except in small quantities for humanitarian purposes. Eric Mamer, spokesperson for the European Commission, assured this afternoon that “it is not a question of blocking, but of to know“.

The President of the European Commission, Úrsula Von der Leyen, confirmed this on Tuesday: “Businesses must fulfill and honor your obligationsFor this reason, we will establish a transparent mechanism for the export of vaccines ”.

Angela Merkel’s government has also come to defend this idea. Its health minister, Jens Spahn, said he supported the proposal to restrict vaccine exports from Europe because Europe was paying up front and “must get its fair share”.

AstraZeneca can continue to produce all of its doses with its UK supply chain, but Pfizer can only do so if it receives the supplies arriving from its large European factory, Puurs, in Belgium.

Brussels, special

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