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BRUSSELS (AP) – The European Union and drugmaker AstraZeneca clashed on Wednesday over a delay in deliveries of coronavirus vaccines as escalating dispute raises concerns over growing competition for limited supplies vaccines needed to end the pandemic.
AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot addressed the dispute for the first time, dismissing the EU’s claim that the company was not meeting its commitments. Soriot said vaccine delivery figures in AstraZeneca’s contract with the 27-nation bloc were targets, not firm commitments, and could not be met due to problems with the rapid expansion. production capacity.
“Our contract is not a contractual commitment, it is an effort at best,” Soriot said in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “Basically we said we were going to do our best, but we can’t guarantee that we will be successful. In fact, to get there, we are a little late.
AstraZeneca said last week that it plans to reduce initial deliveries to the EU to 31 million doses from 80 million due to reduced yields from its manufacturing process in Europe. This sparked an angry backlash from the EU, which says it expects the company to deliver the full amount on time. On Monday, the EU threatened to put in place export controls on all vaccines made in its territory.
Stella Kyriakides, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, rejected Soriot’s explanation for the delays, saying “not being able to guarantee manufacturing capacity is against the letter and spirit of our agreement”.
A third round of talks in as many days aimed at resolving the dispute is scheduled for Wednesday evening in Brussels.
“I call on AstraZeneca to fully engage in restoring trust, to provide full information and to meet its contractual, societal and moral obligations,” Kyriakides said at a press briefing in Brussels.
The EU, which has 450 million citizens and the economic and political weight of the world’s largest trading bloc, is behind schedule behind countries like Israel and Britain in rolling out coronavirus vaccines for its healthcare workers and the most vulnerable. And this, despite more than 400,000 confirmed virus deaths since the start of the pandemic.
The EU has signed agreements for six different vaccines, but so far regulators have only allowed the use of two, one made by Pfizer and the other by Moderna. The European medicines regulator will review the AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday.
AstraZeneca is building more than a dozen regional supply chains around the world to meet regional demand for its vaccine. Overall, AstraZeneca plans to deliver up to 3 billion doses to countries around the world by the end of 2021.
However, setting up each facility is a complicated process that involves training staff and ensuring that each batch of vaccine is safe and effective. Sometimes it goes well, but in other cases there are issues, Soriot said.
“We train them in manufacturing,” he says. “And then, you know, some people are new to this process. It’s like they’re learning the process. They don’t know how to make the vaccine and they aren’t as effective as others. “
The production of the vaccine involves two basic steps. The first is a biological process that involves the growth of cells, which are injected with a virus, Soriot said. The second is to turn this “drug substance” into the final product, fill vials and test each batch of vaccine.
Soriot said AstraZeneca had to cut deliveries to the EU because factories in Europe were performing below expectations from the biological process used to produce the vaccine. This has also happened in other regions as AstraZeneca sought to rapidly expand its production capacity to meet the demands of countries struggling with the pandemic.
“We’ve also had start-up issues like this in the UK supply chain,” Soriot said. “But the UK contract was signed three months before the EU vaccine deal, so with the UK we had three more months to sort out any issues that we encountered. As for Europe, we are three months behind in resolving these problems.
An official from the European Commission, the EU executive, said the bloc had agreed to give AstraZeneca € 336 million ($ 407 million) to develop its vaccine and deliver doses. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the commission would have the right to recover some of the money if the company did not live up to the terms of the advance purchase agreement.
While the company’s UK factories operate more efficiently than those on the mainland, the EU expects to receive doses made in Britain as provided for in the contract, the official said.
“We reject the logic of first come, first served,” Kyriakides said. “It can work with neighborhood butchers, but not in contracts or in our advance purchase agreements. There is no priority clause in the advance purchase contract. “
The shortfall in planned deliveries of the AstraZeneca vaccine comes at the same time as a slowdown in the distribution of Pfizer-BioNTech injections as Pfizer upgrades production facilities at a factory in Belgium.
“There are a lot of emotions in this process right now, and I can understand it: people want a vaccine,” Soriot said. “I also want the vaccine, I want it today. But, at the end of the day, it’s a complicated process. “
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Danica Kirka reported from London.
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